Discussion What's your opinion of the latest japanese titles?

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by Heartless, Aug 28, 2021.

?

Your opinion of these long-ass titles

  1. They're fine

    17.4%
  2. Can't bring myself to take them seriously

    47.8%
  3. I don't care

    19.6%
  4. I'm starved for novels, do you think I read the titles?

    6.5%
  5. I hate them

    8.7%
  1. Heartless

    Heartless May your heart be your guiding key

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    I remember when they used to have three or so words. "Zero no tsukaima", "rain", "overlord", "Shinka no mi", etc.

    Then came novels with slightly longer titles. "To be a power in the shadows", "Chikyuu Tenseisha no Koroshikata", "About the Reckless Girl Who Kept Challenging a Reborn Man Like Me" etc.

    Now a days, they've gotten over three sentences each in length. --> https://www.novelupdates.com/series...ath-who-healed-him-thank-you-now-i-can-fight/

    While these huge ass long title novels might be good, I just can't bring myself to take them seriously. My eyes just unconciously filter them out. Take the one just above for instance. It might be good, but I wouldn't read it. If the author can't figure out a good title for the book, why would the content itself be different?
     
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  2. perspherspley

    perspherspley IZ*ONE

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    Because of copyright that they need their novel to have a longer name to avoid it.
     
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  3. Airlol

    Airlol Well-Known Member

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    At least it more good that Chinese novel where the tittle don't had any meaning. Example, Cooling Dragon. This tittle don't had any meaning at all, I don't see any Cooling Dragon other than the ring in all series. Another example is I shall Seal The Heaven. I only see the tittle meaning at the end and a few chapter only from all 1000+ chapter and I don't see any heaven thing that he want to seal at all.
     
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  4. Bad Storm

    Bad Storm no thought, head empty

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    I feel like I'm avoiding jp novels more and more these days unless it was heavily recommended by someone I know or something that actually caught my eye with the synopsis instead.
     
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  5. Kutaifa

    Kutaifa Pokémon trainer

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    I mean the reason they are that long and the reason those novels sell is because they are popular. And i know that i am not be the target audience, especially now considering that i have grown critical of anime, mangas and light novels for how generic they have become.

    I don't like those titles and don't really like japanese wn titles in general, but that might just be a language issue. They probably sound good in japanese and make more sense.
     
  6. MangoGuy

    MangoGuy Rambling Mango

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    Can you please explain a bit?
     
  7. perspherspley

    perspherspley IZ*ONE

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    With the many numbers of novels that have been written since time immemorial, most of the short titles have already been used up.
    And I assumed that copyrights are a thing in Japan.
     
  8. asriu

    asriu fu~ fu~ fu~

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    have you read
    Higehiro: After Being Rejected, I Shaved and Took In a High School Runaway
    while the title can be funny just give a try..... tbh current state is interesting~ this cat still relly on description not the title although the title cam give a hint~

    just follow the flow~
     
  9. Solus

    Solus 自分のことお嫌いです

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    After reading a long ass japanese title, I felt like I have finished reading the novel lol
     
  10. ToastedRossi

    ToastedRossi Well-Known Member

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    The super long titles are horrible and they're anti-literature, and I love the trend!

    Copyrights are a thing in Japan, but it has nothing to do with the super long titles. You can just look at regular Japanese literature - they work under the same laws but the titles don't look any like that.
     
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  11. SylviaViolet

    SylviaViolet Toast to the ones that we lost on the way⚓️

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    Book title copyrights are a thing? That's pretty surprising.... *looks at English* Can probably find tens of books named the same thing if the word is common.....
     
  12. UnGrave

    UnGrave ななひ~^^

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    It's not a copyright thing, it's a natural progression of things on novel sharing sites that don't allow for cover images. Authors kinda have to make their titles a synopsis or else people won't click on them. Same thing happened with reddit horror stories.
     
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  13. ToastedRossi

    ToastedRossi Well-Known Member

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    Whoops, I was mixing up copyright and trademark. Yeah, book titles copyrighted, but they can be trademarked and this serves a similar purpose. While in some jurisdictions like the US, the title of a single book can't be trademarked, we're generally talking about books that are published in multiple volumes and these can be. I don't know the specific copyright and trademark laws in Japan, but as they are generally more stringent than in the US, titles are probably still covered. That said, this is all academic anyways because this has nothing to do with super long Japanese titles.
     
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  14. Bobwillrule

    Bobwillrule Supreme Ruler of Bobylon

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    You guys can't forget about the synopsis too. You know, the kind of synopsis that tells the whole story in one paragraph? I've seen quite a lot of those now.

    I don't really care about the titles, since some of them are actually ok. The only downside is that typing the titles are really tiring.
     
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  15. Ddraig

    Ddraig Frostfire Dragon|Retired lurker|FFF|Loved by RNG

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    Not a fan of them but 99% of the decent ones (and even a good chunk of the meh ones) get an abbreviation that is used instead of the title anyways so it doesnt matter too much
     
  16. Bachingchung

    Bachingchung Well-Known Member

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    Actually, there's a more rational explanation for them. Due to the declining attention span of readers, they don't bother with the synopsis anymore. That's why they just made the titles more straight forward.
     
  17. adultstories

    adultstories Member

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    i don't care about the damn title as long as the author did not write the novel like a elementary school student
     
  18. Owl Escapee

    Owl Escapee Well-Known Member

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    There's been a lot of threads about this lately, and people have said it's in response to the habits of the Japanese readers. Something like there's so many novels people aren't bothering to read all the summaries, so the title must tell enough about the story to draw them in.

    Personally I need a title to make me interested about the novel; some short titles do, some don't. Some longer titles do, some don't. For the example https://www.novelupdates.com/series...ath-who-healed-him-thank-you-now-i-can-fight/ if it was something like "After I defeated the demon king I was expelled from my country and party due to my injured back" that's a long title that would catch my interest, but the actual title tells the entire plot and bores me.
     
  19. Saorihirai

    Saorihirai Well-Known Member

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    This…how many times have I seen a thread like this now? Anyway I hate them, one word or couple word titles are immediately more attractive to me.
     
  20. sjmcc13

    sjmcc13 Well-Known Member

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    BS.

    The title does not tell the plot. the title tells the initial set up at most in almost every title synopsis hybrid like that. Though it might give hints towards the end goal as well.

    The plot is how the story progresses from the initial setup to its conclusion. It is all the stuff in the middle. Though there do seem to be to many who do not understand that.