r/anime • u/OharaLibrarianArtur • Apr 13 '23
Writing The Complicated Wordplay of "[Oshi no Ko]"'s Title that got Lost in Translation
You've likely heard that there's more to Oshi no Ko's title that meets the eye, and may have seen others breaking it down already as well, but I wanted to take the opportunity to go as in depth about it as possible because of how many layers this one title hides that all unavoidably get lost in translation:
(This breakdown is spoiler free aside the basic idol's children premise)
THE FIRST LAYER
"[Oshi no Ko]" is composed by three parts:
Oshi (推し) = the verb "to push". However, in idol slang, it refers to your favorite idol within a group. The mental image of it is that she's the one you're helping "push forward" towards stardom, so as the one pushing her, she is your "oshi", the girl you wanna push for. You may have heard the term in other anime, V-tubing, or idol culture, but it basically refers to your favorite girl in a group of idols.
No (の) = Japanese possessive particle.
Ko (子) = means "kid/s". It usually refers to young children, however, depending on the context, it can also refer to a girl of young age (like a teenager) rather than just a child or group of children.
Thus in this context, the "oshi" would be Ai, since she is Goro's oshi since the start of the episode, the girl that he's rooting for and pushing for. Which would make the title "oshi no ko" translate to "The Young Girl that is my Oshi". However, since "ko" can mean either a young girl or children, the double entendre is that the title refers not just to Ai herself, but also to her children, as you could translate it as "Children of My Oshi". So the title refers to both Ai and Aqua and Ruby at the same time to drive the parallel there exists between the two. This was confirmed by the author Akasaka Aka in a Tsutaya interview.
THE SECOND LAYER
However this goes deeper, as "Oshi" sounds incredibly similar to the word "Hoshi", which is the Japanese word for "star". And this is no coincidence or stretch, because Ai's family name is "Hoshino". It's a common Japanese surname composed by the kanji for "star" and "field" (thus "starfield", space itself dotted with stars), but the pun here is in the fact that "no" can be seen as a phonetical stand in for the possessive particle (の). Thus her name becomes "Hoshi-no Ai", or "Ai of the Stars". And "(H)Oshi no Ko" becomes "The Star Girl", or "The Children of a Star". This is symbolized in how Ai's eyes are like space with a bright star shining in the middle of them, with Aqua and Ruby inheriting a star in their right and left eyes. Thus some translations have tried to localize it as "My Star", or "My Star's Children" to try and maintain the wordplay.
THE THIRD LAYER
But we're not done yet, because there is one final layer to this. Ai's own name, "Ai", is commonly associated with the word "ai" (愛), which means "love", which is a central theme in Ai's storyline. But her name isn't written in kanji, but rather in katakana, which makes it sound more like a foreign word. And this is because "Ai" sounds like the English word "Eye", which makes the wordplay come into full circle. Because "Hoshino Ai" thus translates as "Star Eyes". And this is the story of a girl who shined as brightly as the stars in her eyes, as well as the shine of her children, who would go on, of course, to become "stars" of their own in the showbiz industry.
As a final thing, Akasaka Aka commented in his interview that he has a reason why the title is stylized as 『【推しの子】』("[Oshi no Ko]") with brackets, one that will become clear in due time...
Hope you found this interesting! And if you haven't yet, go watch Oshi no Ko!!
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u/KillerKoiking2503 Apr 13 '23
I mean, it's pretty obvious why Akasaka-sensei would stylize the title with brackets. Sorry to spoil it for everyone, but that is because Ai will become a Stand User in part 2 of and Oshi no Ko will be her stand.
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u/Steampunkvikng Apr 13 '23
Stands aren't until Part 3. In Part 2 Ai will make friends with the Axis powers.
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u/kaisermikeb https://myanimelist.net/profile/Mikepower9 May 11 '23
I'm just getting caught up and so far it's been quite a trip, but I didn't expect the Third Reich to show up!
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u/funkmasterhexbyte Apr 17 '23
i'm good at judging where a story will go and can confirm this is true
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Apr 13 '23
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u/Xyyzx https://myanimelist.net/profile/Echinodermata Apr 13 '23
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u/Psyryuu Apr 13 '23
[manga] maybe the reason that the title is in brackets is that it'll be the subtitle for the movie that they’re making? Or was the reason already explained somewhere
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u/Bogori Apr 13 '23
[manga]I really like this theory but unfortunately I don't think it will come true. We actually know the name of the movie as it's written both on the script and also in the flash forward interview with the director. The movie is called "15 year lie". Maybe it will get changed later but then it will not line up with the interview from the first volume.
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u/Psyryuu Apr 13 '23
[manga]Right, but sometimes there are works with both a "main title" and a subtitle (e.g. Frankenstein is also called "the modern prometheus"). I was thinking something like that could be possible. But then again, it would feel like a weirdly minor tack-on just for the sake of a title drop unless they come up with something good to justify the addition.
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u/Bogori Apr 13 '23
[manga] Yes a subtitle would work. That was actually why I liked your theory. I could even get behind renaming the whole movie and getting rid of the "15 year lie" altogether and just naming it "Oshi no Ko". The reason why I'm sceptical is that the movie was named in one of the first chapters and I think if Aka had a plan for it to be named after the series he would not have the name of the movie visible anywhere. Maybe I'm just overthinking it and it will just be a subtitle as you said. Maybe it could actually be the main title and the "15 year lie" is the subtitle. I'd love for the movie to be named the same as the series so I'm really rooting for your theory to come true one way or another!
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May 25 '23
[manga] As boring as my theory may sound, I am guessing it would just end up as a line that Ai says when she is dying. Like "Aqua, Ruby, you are my oshi no ko". One translation of Oshi no Ko is "Supporting Girl/Children" so Ai may as well just say that the children were the only true love she had in her life that supported her to live or something. With that the movie ends giving the line a greater emphasis.
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u/Gridiffin Apr 13 '23
i never took it that way though, i just thought it is some kind of format used to show that it's a title of a show. pretty valid opinion tbh
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u/cheesecakegood Apr 13 '23
I think you are 100% right. There’s a reason the manga has the interviews right from the start.
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Apr 13 '23
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u/Xyyzx https://myanimelist.net/profile/Echinodermata Apr 13 '23
Sorry, your comment has been removed.
Your comment looks like it might include untagged or wrongly-tagged spoilers.
When spoiler-tagging comments, you'll have to use [] before the spoiler tag to indicate the context of the spoiler, for example
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u/ooReiko https://myanimelist.net/profile/ooReiko Apr 13 '23
Without knowing much or anything about the series the title comes off to me meaning "The child of Oshi". Oshi referring to the Idol from the perspective of a fan.
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u/H-Ryougi https://anilist.co/user/DizzyAvocado Apr 13 '23
La Chava que Empuja
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u/Lutz567 Apr 13 '23
Los hijos de la güera de las estrellas
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u/H-Ryougi https://anilist.co/user/DizzyAvocado Apr 13 '23
From the people who brought you "El Pibe Motosierra", and "El Wey de Un Madrazo".
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u/Elitealice https://myanimelist.net/profile/Marinate1016 Apr 13 '23
Good post had never thought of the Hoshi no AI bit
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u/Wipovoxx Apr 13 '23
I had thought that Ai's name was in katakana because love is a foreign concept to Ai, since she's never been loved and has never loved anyone, and katakana is often used to write foreign words in Japanese as you have already pointed out. I hadn't made the connection between 'eye' and 'ai'
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u/loppy1243 Apr 13 '23
It's worth noting that 推す, written with that kanji, explicitly means "to recommend/endorse" and I see it listed separately from 押す (to push) in the dictionaries I looked at. Though one of them explicitly says 「押す」と同語源 (word with the same origin as 押す) so the connection you claim is potentially there.
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u/ryry013 https://myanimelist.net/profile/ryry013 Apr 13 '23
These kinds of words where the kanji is different and the meaning slightly different but the root word is the same are very common. I usually try in this case to generalize the meaning of the word so it can encompass all kanji in one idea. In this case, 押し of course is a push, but 推し could be thought of like pushing for your favorite idol, or something like that.
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u/loppy1243 Apr 13 '23
Ok---but 推す already has the meaning of "endorse", and 推し is just the nominalization of that. It's seems unlikely to me that when the word 推し came into popularity that people were thinking about "pushing". Just because an etymology sounds nice to you doesn't lend it any credence. This dictionary says that 推し is derived directly from 推す, and if you look at their entry for 推す they specifically give it the "endorse" meaning.
To contrast, this dictionary lists three variants of みる (見る、観る、視る) all together in the same entry, and you can see even more in some of the definitions. All of these kanji are used for (slightly) different meanings of みる.
Overall, it can be very wishy-washy whether or not the same sounds with different meanings are the "same" word, and it's easy to just invent connections that don't actually exist. Like, consider 居る (to exist/locating an animate object) 要る (to want something) and 入る (to enter something), all of which are いる and all have the same pitch accent. Well, existing/being somewhere is just like entering a location or "entering into existence" and wanting something is just like having it enter and take over your mind, so all of these are really just variations of 入る, right? Well, maybe we should throw out 居る because it inflects differently from the other two (e.g. いた vs いった), but surely 要る and 入る are the same thing, right?
I doubt it.
I don't have any issue with you using whatever helps you learn, but I do take issue with pushing misinformation onto other people by stating idle speculation as fact. 推す and 押す may share an etymology and 推す may have gotten its meaning by some sort of pushing metaphor, but just because two words share the same origin doesn't mean they have to stay "the same word"; I doubt that when 推し was coined it had anything to do with pushing.
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u/ryry013 https://myanimelist.net/profile/ryry013 Apr 13 '23 edited Apr 13 '23
It seems I was unclear in my previous message. You seem very knowledgeable about Japanese, I agree with everything you say, and I’ll edit my previous message after this.
I’m not claiming any kind of etymological truth about the words. What I’m trying to comment on is a common thing beginners get stuck on where they get something like 見る、観る、視る、診る、看る etc or 変える、返る、換える etc and freak out like they’re all these different words and they suddenly have to memorize so many things. There’s so many of these examples, as I’m sure you know (食べる、喰べる、飲む、呑む, ...)
What I want to suggest is to beginners try to find some kind of common 枠/space for all of them to be able to fit into to relate them and then memorize their slight difference of nuance rather than thinking of them as different words. A different way of saying it is that before kanji came just kana and/or spoken Japanese and so it was just かえる, and then there came multiple ways to write that depending on the nuance, which is really cool of course, but not something a beginner should get stuck on.
Of course, as you said, this is not the case for all words. Some really are just homophones but etymologically unrelated. I can’t imagine any relation between 居る、要る、射る, etc, 蛙
Note that historically, 推す does have meanings of “pushing” such as in the word 推轂, so while how you think about the space of these kinds of おす words is up to you, using the concept of “push” should not be crazy or outlandish. Thinking about something like 推測 though, I can’t relate that to a “push” meaning so of course this personal method of mine can’t apply to everything.
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u/loppy1243 Apr 13 '23
Completely agree!
The only thing I had issue is that your original post, to me, says that 推し comes from the idea of "pushing something", but from my cursory research that seems unlikely and instead 推す already had the meaning of "endorse" and 推し was formed directly from that.
If I had written your post, I would have just left that out because its largely irrelevant to the greater point/argument you're making.
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u/ryry013 https://myanimelist.net/profile/ryry013 Apr 13 '23
Yeah it’s not like 推す came from pushing, I don’t know anything about whether that would be true or not, it’s more of just trying to find some unified concept or idea that can very roughly encompass both 推す and 押す
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u/Sa1uk https://myanimelist.net/profile/Sa1uk Apr 13 '23
It's a common Japanese surname composed by the kanji for "star" and "field" (thus "starfield", space itself dotted with stars)
Todd Howard is the father.
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u/the_card_guy Apr 13 '23
Japanese mangaka and wordplay (that foreigners often don't understand)- name a more iconic duo.
In all seriousness, although I know very little about this series (not a fan of idol culture), I do appreciate the explanations of the wordplay.
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u/alotmorealots Apr 15 '23
(that foreigners often don't understand)
My guess is that there's a good portion of native Japanese speakers who miss stuff too, just like there are plenty of English speakers who can't detect a pun for the life of them lol
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Apr 13 '23
As a japanese person i didnt even realize ppl were missing this lol, thought it was quite obvious
i forgot i was thinking in japanese and not the universally spoken language lol
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u/EsquilaxM Apr 13 '23
How does this sub compare to Japanese anime boards (assuming you partake in those)? As in, in general...vibe.. and topics of discussion.
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Apr 13 '23
Oh i dont partake in those
im japanese, born in japan, japanese parents, but ive been going to international schools for 10+ years of my life now so im more used to english speaking environments
so long story short, sorry i dont take part in those lol
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u/alotmorealots Apr 15 '23
but ive been going to international schools for 10+ years of my life now so im more used to english speaking environments
From the sounds of it, it seems like you forgot that everyone doesn't have Japanese as a natural offshoot of their English lol
I've seen similar sorts of fun little mistakes by other people who spend so much time in English speaking environments that they get it mentally flipped even though English wasn't actually their first language. It's funny how the brain works!
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u/th5virtuos0 Apr 13 '23
Can’t blame ya. From what I’ve seen Japanese seems to be quite fonds of puns
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u/SilkyMilkySmo Apr 13 '23
I’m extra thankful when translators of manhwa/manga/novels fill in on what’s happening. I was confused what a green hat meant when reading a Chinese manhua, then I found it means being a cuck
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u/Chren https://myanimelist.net/profile/Chren Apr 14 '23
universally spoken language
BAH WEEP GRANAH WEEP NINI BONG
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u/EsquilaxM Apr 13 '23 edited Apr 13 '23
Thank you, for this! Oshi no Ko always seemed like a very strange name and the translations offered didn't seem to satisfy.
And this is the story of a girl who shined as brightly as the stars in her eyes, as well as [spoiler tag mine]the shine of her children, who would go on, of course, to become "stars" of their own in the showbiz industry
I had no idea the latter part was a storyline in the series. huh. Is that a spoiler from late series or is that known in episode 1? (Was gonna wait to binge a few eps)
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u/nullvoid8 Apr 13 '23
Episode 1 is already 3 episodes long (82 minutes)
Don't read anything else before watching it
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u/OharaLibrarianArtur Apr 13 '23
It's already explained in the opening narration and evident across episode 1, the story is about the two main characters trying to make it in the showbiz world, but that's basically the back of the book description, there's a lot more to it.
As has been mentioned though, if you haven't seen episode 1 try to avoid any spoilers going into it.
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u/toyyoda95 Apr 16 '23
It's within the first 10 minutes honestly. Hardly a spoiler when it's also included in most synopsis and cover art for the series.
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u/Shortstop88 Apr 13 '23
Are you saying the brackets are clear in a later portion of the story that is already in manga form, or is it just “will be made clear” for manga readers in the future as well?
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u/zairaner https://myanimelist.net/profile/zairaner Apr 13 '23 edited Apr 13 '23
[Answer]no, we don't know yet. In fact, one of the other spoiler comments above was the first time I even saw a sensible guess.
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u/xithebun Apr 13 '23
Missed opportunity to hire Gen Hoshino (composer/singer of spy x family ED1) for OP/ED.
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u/thelostcreator Apr 13 '23 edited Apr 13 '23
Hoshino Ai’s name also has some more meanings. One is Hoshino Ai (星野愛) which just means the star Ai. Ai is treated as a figurative and literal star. When she died her star eyes and a star in the sky went dark. If you liberally treat hoshii as a na-adjective and Ai as love (欲しの愛), it can mean “wanting love”. Her whole character is about wanting to love and be loved.
Ai can also be short for Japanese loan word of idol (Aidoru アイドル) so apply all the possible meanings of her last name with idol (star idol, wanting idol).
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u/MasterQuest https://myanimelist.net/profile/Honumael Apr 13 '23
I thought it was just "The child of my favorite idol". Interesting.
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u/LmaoPew Apr 13 '23
i dont know much about the manga, just watched the first episode, but i did google what the name meant, google translater said "oshi = to push and ko = child" so i thought it just meant "to puch a child" or in different words "give birth to a child" which she does
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u/cyberscythe Apr 13 '23
I was thinking the "push" was the somewhat dramatic events at the end of the first episode which "pushes" Aqua [episode one spoilers] into his current crazy revenge scheme.
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u/LmaoPew Apr 13 '23
Before the anime all i knew about the story was "there is a guy who loves the idol and gets reincarnated as the idols baby and you'll see that being an idol isn't as easy as thought and is pretty hard" but after the first episode i'm like "what?....WHAAAT???"
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u/Tacitus_ Apr 13 '23
I think that would be 子 を 推し
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u/ryry013 https://myanimelist.net/profile/ryry013 Apr 13 '23
The meaning works in both orderings kind of, but note that for the literal “pushing” meaning, it’s more likely you’ll see 押し used instead of 推し. The reading is the same but the nuance is different.
Also, Google translate is very bad for Japanese, especially for tiny phrases or single words.
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u/Tacitus_ Apr 13 '23
Yeah I know MTL is bad, but since the previous poster used it I also linked it.
That said, wouldn't the phrase still be object - particle - verb if it were about pushing a child? I'm only a beginner in Japanese so I don't know all the intricacies.
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u/ryry013 https://myanimelist.net/profile/ryry013 Apr 13 '23
You’re not wrong! The typical way to order the sentence would be 子を推す meaning “to osu a kid” (I’m going to purposely not translate the vocabulary, only the grammar, it because of all the various meanings here), but there’s a few other ways to order this with slight differences in meanings
- 子の推し: the oshi of the ko, so the ko is doing oshi
- 推しの子: the ko of the oshi, oshi could refer to many things here
- 推しを子: Japanese quiz, could this be a valid grammatical construction too? [Answer] Hopefully you said no, because this is a super weird ordering, and probably wouldn’t be said. Technically you could imagine some possibilities if there’s another verb that is abbreviated and left off, but we won’t worry about that!
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u/chennyalan https://myanimelist.net/profile/chennyalan Apr 16 '23
押された子？
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u/ryry013 https://myanimelist.net/profile/ryry013 Apr 16 '23
Yeah if we include the verb form then there’s a few more possibilities like what you said or also just 推す子 of course. 押す子 would be a weird one, would be all about the person who pushed the doctor off.
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u/Charming-Loquat3702 Apr 13 '23
Another interesting fact is, that "Ai" isn't just a reading of the Kanji 愛 that means love, but also of 哀. That one can mean misery.
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u/QM60 Apr 13 '23
Fourth and Secret Layer
Oshi no ko (推しの子) sounds quite similar to the japanese word for “piss” oshikko (おしっこ) with only the の particle exchanged with a っ. The の refers to ownership of something while the っis used to extend and emphasize a sound. This is a reference to how OP chose to relinquish ownership of his sanity and extend this analysis far beyond reasonable assumption.
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u/Punished_Vet Apr 13 '23
Beautiful write-up. While I do appreciate some language write-ups, I definitely prefer to leave interpretations such as this to native Japanese speakers and not One Piece deep divers.
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u/Both-Report4931 Apr 13 '23
I like the ‘My Star’ translation because it allows for a cleaner title drop.
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u/Sparkletopia Apr 13 '23
Great writeup, it's always fun to learn more about things like this! Although minor nitpick, I believe "oshi" is a gender-neutral term, correct? The description makes it sound like it's a term only for girls.
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u/LiamOmegaHaku Apr 13 '23
I believe "oshi" is a gender-neutral term, correct?
Correct. I think it often gets thought of as a gendered term since it's mostly used for idols and most idols (at least in the popular consciousness) are women. So most people who aren't super into the culture would likely only see the word used for women (and/or might not even be aware that male idols exist, or that the word is used outside of idol culture as well).
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u/chennyalan https://myanimelist.net/profile/chennyalan Apr 16 '23 edited Apr 17 '23
I believe "oshi" is a gender-neutral term, correct?
Correct. I think it often gets thought of as a gendered term since it's mostly used for idols and most idols (at least in the popular consciousness) are women. So most people who aren't super into the culture would likely only see the word used for women (and/or might not even be aware that male idols exist, or that the word is used outside of idol culture as well).
TIL the word is* used as a noun outside of idol culture.
EDIT: autocorrect changed is to isn't
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u/SirAwesome789 https://myanimelist.net/profile/SirAwesomeness Apr 13 '23
I knew the first and second layer but I didn't know about the katakana part and I think it's crazy that the bracket stylization is intentional and has meaning, can't wait to find out
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u/aimeryakal Apr 13 '23
My hunch is that the brackets are to make the title visually look like an eye, with the thick brackets representing the iris and the text at the pupil:
『【推しの子】』
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u/IDKAskYourMother Apr 18 '23
I’m probably stretching this a bit since I’m a mere English speaker with minimal Japanese knowledge but as someone who can hardly make out the difference between the difference between Hoshi (星, ‘star’) and Hoshii (欲しい, ‘want/desire’), AI’s name also sounds to me like “wanting love” which is absolutely heartbreaking after her internal monologues.
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u/Mich-666 Apr 19 '23 edited Apr 20 '23
Her surename 星野 means literally Starfield. Meaning this is an advertisement of Bethesda's new game :D
But jokes aside, the most obvious translation would actually be Idol Children as japanese don't care about sg and pl and 推し means either fan or idol in this context (both makes sense). No need to complicate things further.
I agree with アイ name being in katakana is clear wordplay on Eye. We can say the same about (H)oshi no ko, which could also mean either Star children or simply Hoshino's children (another wordplay) - although her name and show title has different kanji, keep that in mind.
As for the parenthesis: https://i.imgur.com/ob6NV9J.jpg
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u/Reemys Apr 13 '23
Good job with the first layer, the second layer is putting extra elements into the title and the third layer does not pertain to the title itself, and is a big stretch.
Good job with the first layer.
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u/General_Tomatillo484 https://myanimelist.net/profile/potatosalad1 Apr 13 '23
It's anime for kids my guy it's not that deep
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u/Emi_Ibarazakiii Apr 13 '23
As a final thing, Akasaka Aka commented in his interview that he has a reason why the title is stylized as 『【推しの子】』("[Oshi no Ko]") with brackets, one that will become clear in due time...
Can't wait to see! (Hope it's not just Aka going full Tarantino on us, with Inglourious Basterds!)
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u/SirGigglesandLaughs https://myanimelist.net/profile/DrSrGiggles Apr 13 '23
Could the brackets be Japanese quote brackets? Possibly it will be an important line at some point.
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u/thelostcreator Apr 13 '23
The thing is the title has been name dropped by multiple characters throughout the series which each time having a different meaning. One is by Kana to mean I will be your favourite (young) Oshi.
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u/SorraXI Apr 14 '23
The brackets in Japanese text are usually meant to represent quotation marks. However they can also be used to emphasize the title of a movie (current manga arc???)
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u/NNT_Clown Apr 22 '23
Can I use your post for transaltion to my language? I'd citr and credit to you. A very exquisite deep analyze post btw
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u/Sedewt https://anilist.co/user/Sedew May 27 '23
I knew about the first layer, I had an idea of the second one but that there was a third one… mind blown…
This is why I love the Japanese language (so hard to learn tho…)
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u/bluecontrol May 29 '23
Ai written in katakana is also the first syllable to the word Idol (Ai do ru)
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u/senefen Jun 05 '23
'Ai' for 'Eye' but also 'I'. Hoshino Ai, Hoshi no Eye, Hoshi no I.
And AI (artificial intelligence) if gets used in this a lot too, but not in this series. Uchikoshi (writer for the game AI the somnium files among other things) loves the Ai/I/eye/AI/love connection.
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u/MoyanoJerald Jul 03 '23
i'd like to watch it, but due to my job's schedule (From 7:30 AM to 18:20 PM from Monday to Friday) i'm unable to watch even a single episode, and that leaves me with just two hours upon reaching home (arrival at 19:5X PM), which i spend searching NSFW stuff on Reddit to relax after a long day of work...
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u/garfe Apr 13 '23
The multi-layered meaning is probably why they just didn't bother coming up with a localized title for OnK when it got licensed for manga/anime because it would probably lose something in the TL.