Hidden naming convention

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Hidden naming convention

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Postby MarqFJA87 » Fri May 28, 2021 11:58 am

According to this wiki article, Anno said that there's a pattern to the names of the characters introduced in Episode 15 and others -- specifically for episode 15, this almost certainly refers to Misato's unseen friends, named "Kiyomi" and "Kotoko". Does anyone know what the pattern behind those two characters names is, as well as the names of whichever other characters were alluded to by the statement? I couldn't find anything on my own.
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Re: Hidden naming convention

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Postby Blockio » Fri May 28, 2021 12:15 pm

some quick google searches for both terms didn't bring up anything that looks even faintly relevant, so I'm not sure what connection Anno could be alluding to there.
My best guess is that those are the names of characters from some other show, but that only narrows down the searching area by a little
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Re: Hidden naming convention

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Postby UrsusArctos » Sat May 29, 2021 10:12 pm

Both Misato and Kaji were named after two protagonists from Minako Narita's shoujo manga Aitsu - Misato Izumi and Ryoji Sawada. If there's a pattern here, it's ten to one that Kiyomi and Kotoko are supporting characters from Aitsu. However, the manga doesn't appear to have been fully translated into English, which makes an English-language search for those names difficult. It doesn't help that Kiyomi and Kotoko are common names.

The other possibility - and this is significantly slimmer in context- is that Kiyomi and Kotoko come from Gen Murakami's novel Ai to Gensou no Fascism (The Fascism of Love and Fantasy). Toji Suzuhara and Kensuke Aida have their names borrowed essentially unchanged from the novel, apart from having their given names spelled in Katakana. Anno specifically lists the names Tokita, Manda and Yasugi from Episode 07 as references to the novel, although the way he lists them as specific references but doesn't list the characters in Episode 15 seems like a hint that the latter are a different set of references.

Toji and Kensuke in Episode 03, and the likes of Tokita, Manda and Yasugi in Episode 07 get their fantasies of power rather brutally wrecked one way or the other, so I suspect that's the reason why he named them after Murakami's novel. Episode 15 is relationship-oriented and touches on themes usually found in a Shoujo manga (albeit with adults in this case) which is another reason I suspect that Narita's manga, not Murakami's novel, is the source of those names.
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Re: Hidden naming convention

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Postby Zusuchan » Sun May 30, 2021 3:08 am

UrsusArctos wrote: Gen Murakami's novel Ai to Gensou no Fascism (The Fascism of Love and Fantasy).

It's Ryu Murakami's, actually. Hikari's name was also taken from the novel, IIRC.

I think the Aitsu possibility is probably truer for the ep.15 characters, though.

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Re: Hidden naming convention

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Postby UrsusArctos » Sun May 30, 2021 8:41 pm

View Original PostZusuchan wrote:It's Ryu Murakami's, actually. Hikari's name was also taken from the novel, IIRC.


My bad, Ryu Murakami. (Why the heck did I think his name was Gen??? :headscratch:) Hikari's family name Horaki comes from the novel, but Hikari and her sisters Nozomi (younger) and Kodama (elder) get their given names from the three services of the Tokaido Shinkansen.

I did some further searching for Aitsu but without any luck. It seems to be a lot less famous than Narita's Cypher so I found nothing about the characters in English.
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Re: Hidden naming convention

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Postby MarqFJA87 » Sun May 30, 2021 11:01 pm

View Original PostUrsusArctos wrote:Hikari's family name Horaki comes from the novel, but Hikari and her sisters Nozomi (younger) and Kodama (elder) get their given names from the three services of the Tokaido Shinkansen.

And Sakura Suzuhara's given name probably comes from the related Sakura train service of the San'yō Shinkansen, a westward continuation of the Tōkaidō Shinkansen that is also used by the Nozomi, Hikari, and Kodama services (alongside the Mizuho service).
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"Where there is distress, therein lies a story. Where there is a story, therein lies a will. And wherever there is a will, therein lies a soul."
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Re: Hidden naming convention

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Postby UrsusArctos » Mon May 31, 2021 12:40 am

Of course, Sakura Suzuhara is a 3.0 character, not an NGE character - Toji's sister never gets a name in NGE, unlike Hikari's sisters who are at least mentioned by name.

I knew about the Sakura shinkansen service but I couldn't consider it remotely conclusive - Sakura is a very common name for girls in Japan (being the name of the cherry blossom) and there's no shortage of things named after the flower. Among other things, there was a World War Two Matsu-class destroyer under that name, bringing up the possibility that Sakura was named after the obscure warship. The same actually applies for Sakura's Wunder shipmate Sumire Nagara, whose given name is a flower, and shared by a Matsu-class destroyer - all of which were named after flowers or trees. Since we already have a person named after two warships in NGE (Maya Ibuki), Sakura Suzuhara and Sumire Nagara might simply continue the warship trend seen previously with NGE names. Or maybe not. If Anno hadn't outright stated that Maya's given name came from the cruiser, it would have been quite thoroughly inconclusive because Maya is another highly common name for girls.

Additionally, Sakura is a Suzuhara, not a Horaki, so there's no reason for her to come under the train naming convention unless Anno decided he wanted to expand the train naming convention beyond the Horaki family. We haven't heard anything like that yet, so it's simplest to leave Sakura's name origin "indefinite" for the time being.
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Re: Hidden naming convention

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Postby Zusuchan » Mon May 31, 2021 7:03 am

Ursus: I knew that the Horakis' first names are based on train lines, I just thought "Hikari Horaki" was taken from Murakami's novel in its entirety.

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Re: Hidden naming convention

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Postby MarqFJA87 » Mon May 31, 2021 7:52 am

View Original PostUrsusArctos wrote:Of course, Sakura Suzuhara is a 3.0 character, not an NGE character - Toji's sister never gets a name in NGE, unlike Hikari's sisters who are at least mentioned by name.

... Actually, she does get a name (Natsumi) and was voiced by Miki Nagasawa in the spin-off video game Neon Genesis Evangelions/Shin Seiki Evangelion 2.
"Our magic is not omnipotent. A little bit of courage is the true magic."
–Negi Springfield, Negima: Magister Negi Magi

"Where there is distress, therein lies a story. Where there is a story, therein lies a will. And wherever there is a will, therein lies a soul."
–Evangeline A.K. McDowell, Negima: Magister Negi Magi

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Re: Hidden naming convention

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Postby Blockio » Mon May 31, 2021 10:49 am

huh, that's an interesting detail, wasn't aware of that. I'll add that to the wiki real quick
I can see why Gendo hired Misato to do the actual commanding. He tried it once and did an appalling job. ~ AWinters
Your point of view is horny, and biased. ~ glitz2hard
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Postby MarqFJA87 » Mon May 31, 2021 12:22 pm

I first discovered the fact while I was browsing the Japanese Wikipedia's article on NGE characters (Google TLed, of course) one day. It may contain even more valuable nuggets that I'm yet unaware of, so it would probably be prudent to have resident J2E translators comb it.
"Our magic is not omnipotent. A little bit of courage is the true magic."
–Negi Springfield, Negima: Magister Negi Magi

"Where there is distress, therein lies a story. Where there is a story, therein lies a will. And wherever there is a will, therein lies a soul."
–Evangeline A.K. McDowell, Negima: Magister Negi Magi

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Postby UrsusArctos » Mon May 31, 2021 4:46 pm

@Zusuchan: Thanks for the clarification. The translated Anno quote seems quite clear that only the "Horaki" part of her name came from Ryu Murakami's novel and that her given name came from the train service.

View Original PostName origins page wrote:Horaki also comes from Murakami's novel. Hikari, her older sister Nozomi, and her younger sister Kodama are borrowed from Tokaido Shinkansen express train names.


Unless there's a fault in the translation, the sentence (as rendered in English) seems quite unambiguous. "Hikari" and its gender-neutral form "Hikaru" (like Hikaru Utada) are pretty common names. While I wouldn't put it past Ryu Murakami to use "Hikari Horaki" as a name, current information suggests that it was Anno's creation, not Murakami's.

MarqFJA87 wrote:... Actually, she does get a name (Natsumi) and was voiced by Miki Nagasawa in the spin-off video game Neon Genesis Evangelions/Shin Seiki Evangelion 2.


I'm not sure if Anno would've settled on "Sakura" if "Natsumi" was meant to be her canon name in NGE (as opposed to something invented for the game), but it is very interesting to know. Nice find, thank you for making us aware of this!
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Re: Hidden naming convention

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Postby MarqFJA87 » Mon May 31, 2021 4:57 pm

View Original PostUrsusArctos wrote:I'm not sure if Anno would've settled on "Sakura" if "Natsumi" was meant to be her canon name in NGE (as opposed to something invented for the game), but it is very interesting to know. Nice find, thank you for making us aware of this!

I wouldn't put it past Anno and co. to have completely forgotten that they used "Natsumi" as the name of Touji's sister in that game. They've pretty much forgotten all about the existence of every spinoff-exclusive major character that they've come up, from Mayumi Yamagishi to Nene Matsukaze, and even Mana Kirishima barely gets any attention.
"Our magic is not omnipotent. A little bit of courage is the true magic."
–Negi Springfield, Negima: Magister Negi Magi

"Where there is distress, therein lies a story. Where there is a story, therein lies a will. And wherever there is a will, therein lies a soul."
–Evangeline A.K. McDowell, Negima: Magister Negi Magi

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Re: Hidden naming convention

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Postby Blockio » Mon May 31, 2021 5:54 pm

I wouldn't say "forgotten" as much as "decided not to include them", since they were simply one-off characters; what's more, for any of these characters the amount of creative control Anno&co had over the game is.... dubious, whereas Toji' sis is a not insignificant plot point in both NGE and NTE, so I find it unlikely that they would just change it like that if that was the plan all along
I can see why Gendo hired Misato to do the actual commanding. He tried it once and did an appalling job. ~ AWinters
Your point of view is horny, and biased. ~ glitz2hard
What about titty-ten? ~ Reichu
The movies function on their own terms. If people can't accept them on those terms, and keep expecting them to be NGE, then they probably should have realized a while ago that they weren't going to have a good time. ~ Words of wisdom courtesy of Reichu

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Postby UrsusArctos » Tue Jun 01, 2021 8:54 am

Agreed, and given the fact that Anno and co. remembered Nozomi and Kodama Horaki and came up with artwork for them for the Shinkalion crossover and the Evangelion Shinkansen shows that they do care about the minor characters they've created! Toji's sister was a highly important plot point in NGE but in the absence of a name she really was just that, a plot point, rather than a character, in complete contrast with Sakura from Rebuild.
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WAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!(<-link to lunacy)...Taste me, if you can bear it. (Warning: Language NSFW)
The main point of idiocy is for the smart to have their lulz. Without human idiocy, trolling would not exist, and that's uncool, since a large part of my entertainment consists of mocking the absurdity and dumbassery of the world, especially the Internet.-MaggotMaster


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