It’s not just a japan thing.
Comics do it a lot. Especially DC.
Edward Nygma, Harley Quinn, Victor Fries, Roy G. Bivolo, Julian Gregory Day, Scott Free, …
But Marvel has a whole bunch too:
Mar-Vell, Telford Porter, Cassandra Nova, Klara Prast, Jack Russell…
Ah, you’re right. I didn’t grow up reading DC or Marvel, so I was under the impression that Western comics didn’t do that as much. Another one I don’t like is characters having names for each one of their attacks and screaming it out loud. As much as I love shonen mangas, it always felt super weird. I’d be very interested in knowing when/why these tropes became popular.
I feel like in trying to be clever with wordplay, sometimes nuance and suspense is removed from the story. SMT:IV for example has a character that shows up and is kind of out of place, just a regular (but weird) school girl roaming the streets of a demon infested Tokyo with little care for the situation. It’s obvious that there’s more to her than meets the eyes, and the writers are trying to set up for some kind of reveal, but her name is so on the nose that there’s no need to speculate who she really is.
She’s called “Hikaru”, and anyone that’s played any SMT game and has a general idea of what usually goes down will clock her as Lucifer the moment her name is established.
Then again, it’s not like Thorman, Lous Cyphre, or Louisa Ferre are any less on the nose.
As a Japanese person, I’ve always hated this trope. It just feels so lazy.
It’s not just a japan thing.
Comics do it a lot. Especially DC.
Edward Nygma, Harley Quinn, Victor Fries, Roy G. Bivolo, Julian Gregory Day, Scott Free, …
But Marvel has a whole bunch too:
Mar-Vell, Telford Porter, Cassandra Nova, Klara Prast, Jack Russell…
Ah, you’re right. I didn’t grow up reading DC or Marvel, so I was under the impression that Western comics didn’t do that as much. Another one I don’t like is characters having names for each one of their attacks and screaming it out loud. As much as I love shonen mangas, it always felt super weird. I’d be very interested in knowing when/why these tropes became popular.
I feel like in trying to be clever with wordplay, sometimes nuance and suspense is removed from the story. SMT:IV for example has a character that shows up and is kind of out of place, just a regular (but weird) school girl roaming the streets of a demon infested Tokyo with little care for the situation. It’s obvious that there’s more to her than meets the eyes, and the writers are trying to set up for some kind of reveal, but her name is so on the nose that there’s no need to speculate who she really is.
She’s called “Hikaru”, and anyone that’s played any SMT game and has a general idea of what usually goes down will clock her as Lucifer the moment her name is established.
Then again, it’s not like Thorman, Lous Cyphre, or Louisa Ferre are any less on the nose.