My Hero Academia

The dangers of extending a Punny Name policy to Complete Monsters

looking at it dispassionately, it's an evil doctor with a name referring to evil doctors

but yeah, perhaps a tad insensitive

Apparently Maruta is a common word in Japan (means "trunk") and the author probably just didn't notoce.

The comparison with calling him Dr. Holocaust falls flat because everyone knows what the Holocaust was, while in Japan WWII is often just swept under the rug and forgotten about, with schoolbooks glancing over the subject. Horikoshi probably didn't remember the implications of that word, if he even knew what it meant in the first place.

Well, there's Captain Nazi.

I dunno, having a evil scientist named after a real world example of evil science seems like too much of a coincidence.

Although it seems that's what they're going with

Edited by WashTheLaundryHero on Feb 3rd 2020 at 4:54:16 AM

Okay, since there's a lot of half-information floating everywhere (thankfully little to no misinformation though), here's a full summary of the situation.

Horikoshi created a villain who conducts humans experiments and named him Maruta. What's meaning the behind this? It's the regular Japanese word for "log". Why is this a problem? In World War II, Project Log the name given to the human experimentation project conducted by the Japanese on Koreans, Chinese and Russians. To make it worse, in Korean the word "maruta" refers exclusively to Project Log's victims, not to the project itself. From the perspective of a Korean fan not fluent in Japanese, Horikoshi is calling a maruta experiment perpetrator by the victim's name. This is equivalent to refering to a Nazi villain as Dr. Jew, a nuke user as Dr. Hiroshima, or a terrorist as Dr. Twintowers.

The response to the situation was Jump announcing, in less than a day after the chapter's release, that the doctor's name will be changed. Their excuse is that neither Horikoshi nor anyone in the editorial department knew about this particular meaning for the name. Now, just how believable is this excuse? A whole lot more than you'd expect, I assure you. There are 2 main reason for the solidity of their claim.

1) Japan's politics towards WWII are majorly forgetting it ever happened. It's not a subject looked in detail at schools. The only ones who know a lot about it are the ones who actively research it. The existance of Project Maruta is very far from common knowledge in Japan, unlike it is Korea. Not only that, but Maruta is also both a regular dictionarized word and real name for real people (albeit not a common one). Googling Maruta will give you results about logs long before it gives you anything related to Japan's war crimes. Even on the unbelievably unlikely chance that Horikoshi's instinct told him to check if his new character's name could be associated with scientifical atrocities, it's still possible for the problem to slip unnoticed.

2) The claim that Horikoshi MUST have given the Maruta name to the scientist because he always do Punny Name is not completely valid because the name Maruta is already loaded with enough puns even without the whole human experimentation angle.

• Maruta is partial anagram of Daruma (in sort of a Sdrawkcab Name way in Japanese letters), his alias.
• While names are usually associated Quirks, this rotund Quirkless man is called "log". A log is a round block of wood. Another type of block of wood is the deku-no-bou, which is also popular insult for people who can't do anything decently. Said insult has already been very strongly associated with quirklessness through our protagonist.
• A log is basically a cut tree. Tree in Japanese is ki. So combining that with his family name Shiga, we could the doctor's full name as Shiga_ki.

Whether Jump and Horikoshi are telling the truth or not, their claim is a very believable one and most arguments I've seen against were visibly not informed enough. That's said, for completion's sake, we need to look at the assumption that there was the Project Maruta intent in the doctor's name. Even on that event, it's unreasonable to assume Horikoshi knew Koreans only used that word to refer to the project's victims. That would be the equivalent of calling him Dr. Holocaust, which is insensitive and ill-tasted but not a sign of fascist tendencies on Horikoshi's part. If anything, using the Maruta name intentionally would be a anti-fascist move because the Japanese far-right is big on denying war crimes and would avoid any WWII-associated names at all costs.

Quick correction there: It's not that Maruta is used exclusively for the victims in "Korean". That word is Japanese through and through, and while it might've been used to refer to the project in general, the reason it is used to refer to the project is BECAUSE that was the term the Japanese called the subjects to dehumanize them. It's not that the word means something in Korean and something else in Japanese in context of the same event.

If I'm understanding right, in Japanese it refers to the project, but koreans use it to refer to the victims.

So it's like intending to name a villain Doctor Holocaust but accidentally calling them Dr Jew in yiddish.

Or, since it's possible the censorship in Japan deprived Horikoshi of the knowledge that this even happened, Calling a villain "Dr Log" and then going "Wait, shit, that means what in Korean?"

I think it's more Japanese people wouldn't think to refer to the victims now as Maruta since it's so dehumanizing, but for Koreans that might not know the meaning of the word beyond this context it's the only thing they associate it with.

Edited by WashTheLaundryHero on Feb 3rd 2020 at 5:56:35 AM

This was definitely an unexpected turn of events.

Again, it's not like Japanese used that word just for the project and not the victims. It's a Japanese word to begin with, who would have used it for the victims if not the Japanese? It's more like its usage regarding human experimentations, victim or project, is not as prominent in Japanese memory because it's an ordinary word by itself and they use it in many different contexts.

And it's not like Japanese really have no way of knowing. There's less awareness of the word being used that way, yes, but I've seen Japanese fans on Twitter learn about this controversy and look up Japanese resources by themselves.

EDIT: Btw, this is not just Korean vs Japanese thing either. Chinese fans are going nuts over it too and Shueisha actually posted their notice in Chinese as well.

Edited by heejung on Feb 3rd 2020 at 11:14:06 PM

Of course they used it for the victims at the time, but I mean Japanese people now.

Like, imagine the Final Solution was called 'Project Slaughterhouse' instead and the nazis referred to the victims as pigs(in German of course).

Would any modern German ever associate the German word for pig for those same victims? Probably not because it's not even some kind of specific slur for jews or anything, it's just a generic dehumanizing term.

Edited by WashTheLaundryHero on Feb 3rd 2020 at 6:29:29 AM

It's less of a "no way of knowing" deal and more of a "no reason to assume the word had a darker until pointed out". Not to mention this is not a meaning covered in major dictionaries (Goo, Weblio and Kotobank).

Though whether this was more of a linguistics problem or a hystorical conciousness problem is sorta of a subjective question, as both factors heavily weighted in to the matter.

Uh, actually pretty likely. There'd be at least awareness that the word has that meaning.

Edited by heejung on Feb 3rd 2020 at 11:28:40 PM

Seems like an honest mistake.

The thing about comparisons to the Nazis is that nazi warcrimes are both well know and Germany acknowledged them. japan, to my knowledge, has no such case.

Anyway it's a pretty fast response, which also makes me think they got a bit more than just a few tweets ( as I've seen some people dismissively claim). It also seems like a mistake and no malice. Don't names usually go through the legal department to ensure no such connections exist? I recall that Lego did that with both it's sets and any fiction based on the sets.

Edited by devak on Feb 3rd 2020 at 4:13:34 PM

Man, people are demanding an apology all over Hori's tweet.

Talk about nuking a series' reputation overnight...

Truman was on a hurry to start the Cold War and chose dropping goddamn A-bombs then being all forgiving over allowing the Soviets to march on Tokyo like they marched on Berlin. So, Japan got away scott-free; but getting nuked should not wash away war crimes.

EDIT: Nah, people are overreacting. Bet they are the same ones that keep preaching Attack On Titan is imperialist apology. Everything is Twitter noise that won't make an actual dent on anything.

Edited by Eriorguez on Feb 3rd 2020 at 6:53:46 PM

Hori is also kind of sensitive to this stuff though.

I somehow doubt it was the twitter people that made them change the name. They've probably gotten a more serious scolding than that.

Edited by WashTheLaundryHero on Feb 3rd 2020 at 10:30:51 AM

God, I just hope the five-minutes relevancy cycle is even quicker for this one issue.

Well considering they are already changing the name, it’s pointless to make a big deal out of it now.

What do you all think they'll change the name into?

I mean...they just need to change one letter and problem will be solved.

Simplest thing would be Maruda, and go for the Sdrawkcab Name suggested earlier.

Edited by sgamer82 on Feb 3rd 2020 at 12:11:38 PM

Gonna go through Hori's twitter account to download his sketches. He's known to be pretty sensitive (Apparently people who went to Jump Festa recognized Amajiki's anxiety as "Wait that's exactly how sensei acted on stage lol"), so just in case he is scared into deleting his account...

Apparently some Chinese publisher discontinued sale of MHA ebooks. (Bilibili, which I think is owned by Tencent and is pretty big deal?) Here's hoping everything resolves quickly and it doesn't affect Horikoshi too much.

Edited by heejung on Feb 4th 2020 at 4:22:12 AM