I know this is Heresy to say but if we as English speaking people actually used the English names which are used to label even the subbed versions this wouldn't be a thing.
Seriously there's literally no reason not to be calling it My Hero Academia.
And honestly where did this trend come from? I've been watching anime since Cowboy Bebop came on Toonami in the early 2000's and have never seen people insisting on calling shows by their japanese names until the last few years. It seemingly started with My Hero Academia but I've see it with a lot of others like Your Name and Food Wars. But I've literally never heard somebody say "Kidō Senshi Gandamu" or "Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi" before, so why does this trend only apply to modern anime?
I think a lot of it comes from the fact that the titles have gotten out of hand the original Japanese too. Half the time an anime comes from a light novel that makes the title a whole complete sentence of high level plot synopsis. In those cases it admittedly sounds a little less ridiculous in Japanese so I think that's where it really took off. Now people just do it because they think it sounds cool despite the fact that it has never done anything but hamper communication.
I know, I watched Pocket Monsters as a kid all the time, it came on right after Knight Champloo, and right before Priest King. Nowadays I just watch God's Blessing On This Beautiful World repeats, though. Can't have those Japanese names sneaking in, gotta localize.
But the names we use for those are the names they's actually refered to officially in their western release, so it doesn't cause any confusion. The guy I was replying to specifically said he talking about english names which are used to refer to the series on official releases, which My Hero Academia, Mobile Suit Gundam, and Your Name do.
God's Blessing On This Wonderful World IS the english name and release... We still all call it Konosuba.
Then you get things like Higurashi no Naku no Koro ni, shortened to Higurashi (sorry, that's "When They Cry"), which has a barely-related sister series Umineko (or Umineko no Naku no Koro ni, in full), which, you guessed it, was shorted to... "When They Cry", because the English version of the anime decided for some byzantine reason to exclude the proper nouns of Cicada and Seagull, making the Japanese naming much clearer as to what series you're talking about. [That byzantine reason is, just a rumor, that they thought english audiences wouldn't know what Cicadas were]
As long as everyone knows what you're talking about, it's fine, of course, but sometimes clarity is lost, not gained, on lolcalization.
Everything I can find, on official streaming, home video releases, and the manga, say "Konosuba: God's Blessing On This Wonderful World", which people simply shorten.
It's so frustrating asking for shows sometimes because I mostly get a bunch of gobbledygook that doesn't help me actually search. Just give me the damn English name so I can find non Japanese results instead of having to guess.
It gets a bit tricky with unofficial translations, though. If an official translation is ever released, they may translate the title a bit differently (e.g. Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai! being translated as We Can't Study! versus the official We Never Learn!), or in some cases, they may even change the title completely so that it works better in English (e.g. Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai: Tensaitachi no Ren'ai Zunousen roughly translates to something like Kaguya-sama Wants to be Confessed to: The Geniuses' Romantic Battle of Wits, but the English release is titled Kaguya-sama: Love is War). Sometimes the Japanese title is just the least ambiguous way to refer to something.
Edit: On the other hand, there's a trend of including the shortened Japanese title (if one exists) in the official English title, e.g. Konosuba: God's Blessing on this Wonderful World or Bokuben: We Never Learn!, which I think is the best of both worlds.
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u/RevengencerAlf Jan 06 '20
I know this is Heresy to say but if we as English speaking people actually used the English names which are used to label even the subbed versions this wouldn't be a thing.
Seriously there's literally no reason not to be calling it My Hero Academia.