Tuesday 9 June 2020

Japanese High-school Boy Named Jimmy

Just a few days ago, I started reading a Japanese detective comic series named Case Closed, originally titled 名探偵コナン (Mei-Tantei Konan), or Great Detective Conan. It is an extremely long-running manga franchise which has staggering 98 volumes as of June, 2020. I remember its first episode was released on a Weekly Shonen Sunday magazine about 25 years ago when I was a junior high-school student. Its TV series started 2 years later and has been still going on too.

The main protagonist is a high-school student who is obsessed with mystery novels and deduction. He himself is a renowned private detective who cracks tough cases in cooperation with a local police department. One day, he gets caught witnessing a crime scene and is knocked cold by a member of a crime syndicate who proceeds to administer a strange medicine to him. As he wakes up, the bad guys are gone, but he finds himself shrunken to a little kid. After the incident, his neighbor, a self-proclaimed inventor, advises him to stay at his classmate's home, whose father is also a private detective, because he may stumble upon members of the syndicate as he helps the father's work. 

When I was reading the first volume of the series, I noticed that some character names had been westernized through translation. For example, The main protagonist, Shinichi Kudo, is named Jimmy Kudo in the English version. His classmate Ran Mohri and her father, Kogoro Mohri, are Rachel Moore and Richard Moore respectively. 

This alteration of names has generated some contradictions in the comic's story. There's a scene where Jimmy's neighbor Dr. Agasa tells him not to reveal his true identity to anyone because if he did, the crime organization would send agents to search for him and people around him could be in great danger. Shortly after that, Rachel shows up and ask Jimmy's name. He gets stuck for an answer for a moment but manages to come up with a made-up name "Conan Edogawa". Hearing that, Rachel says, "Conan? What a strange name..." 

For sure, it sounds strange for a Japanese name... But So does yours (originally Ran Mohri, but Rachel Moore in the English version)! 

And then Dr. Agasa takes him one side and whispers to Jimmy, "What kind of a name is Conan!? You're not some foreigner..." 

OK... Now that you mention it, Jimmy sounds very Japanese... 



No comments:

Post a Comment