Trivia: Difference between revisions

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A place for general trivia that are not necessarily worth mentioning in a character's page or anywhere else on the wiki, for that matter. If you find it interesting, put it here to talk about it.
This is supposed to be a digest overview of things-worth-knowing about Oni. Please keep in-depth discussions for [[:Category:Added value|added value sections]] elsewhere. Also feel free to elaborate on the [[Talk:Trivia|talk page]].


==The Meaning of Konoko==
==Events==
The page for [[Konoko]] offers the interpretation of her name ("this child") that [[User:Iritscen|I]] most prefer. However, I think it's important to note here, for those who aren't familiar with the way Japanese works, that one must always be careful when interpreting names based on a breakdown into syllables. The actual meaning of a name must be determined by the [[wikipedia:kanji|kanji]] with which it is written. Simply hearing a word or seeing it written in Roman letters like "Konoko", you don't know what kanji make it up, or even how many kanji. ''Therefore, you cannot know the real meaning of the name.'' If a person only knew the syllables, they could just as easily break down "konoko" as "ko no ko", meaning "child of child", "child of sin", "price of sin", etc., but none of these are likely to be correct if you consider Konoko to be a "proper" Japanese name that is based in kanji. To my knowledge, there is no official representation of Konoko's name in the form of kanji.
===Emergency Override Griffin Alpha Zero===
:People can't always tell why (zombie) Shinatama, after engaging Omega Security Mode, continued to advance on Griffin despite the emergency override and the order to "stay back".
:It turns out that Griffin was using one of the low-level emergency overrides that had been turned off by D. Joost and P. Tamte (Bungie staff cameos) without Griffin being notified.
==[[Names]]==
===[[Oni_(demon)|Oni]]===
:There are the buddhist oni (either imps or patron deities) and the pagan oni (malicious ogres or beasts). Food for eerie tales, oni-slaying epics and more.
:A relevant expression is "Oni ni Kanabô" ("strong beyond strong"). It can also have the proverbial meaning that great power should only be grated to the worthy.
:Oni-gokko is the game of tag. The "it" in the game of tag is the "oni" in oni-gokko. Another interesting reference is the "oni warrior" Musashibo Benkei.
===[[Konoko]]===
:''More blahblah [[Talk:Trivia#The_Meaning_of_Konoko|HERE]]
Konoko's name is never written in Oni, and so one can't really be sure what kanji/hiragana it would be composed of.
:Given the many meanings of "ko", tentative decompositions and interpretations can get rather wild.
"Konoko" is actually a recurrent "word" in Japanese, but the meaning depends a lot on the immediate context.
:Thus, [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0228493/ Konoko no nanatsu no oiwai ni] (a 1982 movie) can be translated
:*as "[[seven]] cheers for this child" if you don't know what the movie is about
:*as "for my daughter's [[seven]]th birthday" if you ''do'' know what it's about ^_^
So it can mean anything from "this child" to "my child" to "my daughter". In Konoko's case, the latter 2 sound better.
===[[Shinatama]]===
Among the animated dolls of the Edo era, a shinatama was a "trickster puppet", guarding the contents of a jewel box.
:The puppet could also make the contents of the jewel box disappear, with a "magic trick" animation.
::The initial decomposition of SHINA-TAMA in this case is probably "precious jewel".
===[[Mukade]]===
:Mukade are giant, poisonous centipedes that are known for infesting Japanese houses. Several mukade species exist.
:Mukade was also a mythical beast (also a giant centipede), which bothered dragons and was slain by a human warrior.
===[[BGI]]===
:Placeholder name standing for "Bad Guys, Internations". Reinterpreted as "Be Good, Inc." by [[User:Geyser|geyser]]


Stepping out of the world of the game, one could ask, Well, what did the creators intend Konoko to mean? There is evidence that they were not just randomly slapping Japanese syllables together, as "Mukade" likely refers to the [[wikipedia:mukade|insect]] (again, we can't know this without kanji, but this is a case where the word "mukade" has a traditional usage in Japanese myths (and real-life, if you are unfortunate enough to have them in your house), so we can make a reasonable ''assumption'' as to the meaning). However, the notion that Bungie West had a meaning in mind for "Konoko" is pretty much blown out of the water by [http://oni.bungie.org/special/part1/brent.html this interview]. Stepping back into the game's world, we can still pretend that it means "this child", or whatever we want it to mean, when plotting an [[Oni2|Oni 2]], or trying to be clever in an [[:Category:Added value|Added value]] section. Just don't make the mistake of asserting your opinion as if it's fact.
==Development and hype==
 
===Hidden Messages in Oni Art & Trailer===
Here's what we ''can'' state as fact based on the sounds in Konoko's name:<br>
Hiragana (used for personal names): このこ<br>
Katakana (used for sounding out kanji):コノコ
 
But again, that's of limited value because name meanings do not come from the kana.
 
==Hidden Messages in Oni Art & Trailer==
From the Marathon Story page, long before Oni even came out:
From the Marathon Story page, long before Oni even came out:
     I don't know if this has been covered before, but perhaps this is of interest.
     I don't know if this has been covered before, but perhaps this is of interest.
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Source: http://marathon.bungie.org/story/halo_oct-dec99.html
Source: http://marathon.bungie.org/story/halo_oct-dec99.html
 
:N.B. they are actually hiragana/katakana rather than kanji.
==Occurrences of Oni Names in the "Real World"==
Do the quotes on "real world" seem strangely disdainful of reality as we know it? Oops. Oh well. Here is a place for listing actual places where names and places from Oni show up. Again, it's not a matter of whether these occurrences have any significance, but just for the sake of showing that we found something weird/interesting. If it's not self-evidently weird or interesting, explain why you find it so.
 
*'''Konoko No Nanatsuno Oiwaini'''. Can also be written as "Konoko no nanatsu no Oiwai ni", which is easier to parse.
::You can find a mention of this phrase [http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/file/930041/47103 here] and [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0228493/fullcredits here]. IMDb [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0619958/ gives the literal translation] as "For My Daughter's Seventh Birthday". My limited understanding of the language tells me that, out of the three significant words in that phrase, "nanatsu" is "seven" or "seventh", and "oiwai" is probably "birthday", leaving "konoko" to mean "daughter" or "my daughter". This is quite interesting. Once again I am astounded at the beneficial coincidence that "Konoko" can mean something significant even though Brent Pease, in the interview linked to above, claims it 'just popped into my [non-Japanese-knowing] head'. I would really like to know whether the "konoko" in the title means "daughter" or "my daughter", but I'm guessing it's just plain "daughter".
::That still doesn't tell me why on earth a Japanese video game has a song by that title, but hey, why start trying to understand the Japanese now?
 
*'''"Shounen A" Konoko wo Unde'''
::http://www.sasugabooks.com/product_info.php?products_id=30417 is a book with an interesting title that I can't translate. I know "Shounen A" is "Kid A", which is pretty amusing for fellow Radiohead fans out there.
 
*'''Konoko wa wagamama...'''
At http://www.cherryblossom-garden.com/1/aiko4.html are the lyrics to a song by the band AIKO that has the line “Konoko wa wagamama nandakara amayakashi chadame yo”. It's actually in quotes, set apart from the other lyrics as if someone in the song is speaking it. To the right are the original Japanese characters, ｢この子は我が儘なんだから甘やかしちゃだめよ｣ (notice the quote marks there too). Presumably the "この子" would have to be "konoko" but then why are the first and last syllables different? You'd expect them to be the same. I am also unable to find that 子 symbol in either the [[wikipedia:katakana|katakana]] or [[wikipedia:hiragana|hiragana]] scripts. There's also no translation of the lyrics. Babelfish provides this, suprisingly enough: "Therefore as for this child selfish what you pamper, ちゃ useless." That's actually pretty good for Babelfish. It actually recognized the "this child" in there somehow (especially dubious trivia: "wagamama" is "selfish", so "konoko wa wagamama" is "this selfish child").
 
*'''Konoko Philips'''
Who the heck is Konoko Philips, you ask? The love child of Konoko and Emo Philips, perhaps? No, it's not that frightening or interesting.
From http://www.vor.ru/Exclusive/excl_next8884_eng.html:
The Lukoil transnational corporation expands its presence in Europe. The company, notably, buys on the European retail market a network of petrol<br>stations from its US partner Konoko Philips.[...]
 
*'''Konoko's Ovaries?!'''
This alarming note from a bonafide Japanese person, at http://www.spc.int/coastfish/news/BDM/19/BDM_19.pdf, page 3:
The ovaries are dried (called konoko), and the intestines are salt-fermented (called konowata).
 
She's talking about fish, by the way. And it's possible that the drying process is what's called konoko.
 
==Translating Names==
::There aren't many (free) resources on the Web for translation. The only two I'm aware of at the moment are:
*http://www.freedict.com/onldict/jap.html
*http://babelfish.altavista.com/
::The FreeDict is the only good choice when getting translations for romanized Japanese, because Babelfish apparently expects kanji/kana as input. But the FreeDict is quite limited. For instance, looking at the items above, if you wanted to know what "oiwai" or "unde" mean, you're out of luck. Also, Babelfish is the only tool that accepts whole phrases, whole web sites even. On the other hand, Babelfish is notoriously poor at syntactical interpretations, and its actual vocabulary is quite limited too.
::If anyone out there reading this really knows their Nihongo, we'd welcome their input on translating any of the above Japanese.

Revision as of 16:18, 27 March 2008

This is supposed to be a digest overview of things-worth-knowing about Oni. Please keep in-depth discussions for added value sections elsewhere. Also feel free to elaborate on the talk page.

Events

Emergency Override Griffin Alpha Zero

People can't always tell why (zombie) Shinatama, after engaging Omega Security Mode, continued to advance on Griffin despite the emergency override and the order to "stay back".
It turns out that Griffin was using one of the low-level emergency overrides that had been turned off by D. Joost and P. Tamte (Bungie staff cameos) without Griffin being notified.

Names

Oni

There are the buddhist oni (either imps or patron deities) and the pagan oni (malicious ogres or beasts). Food for eerie tales, oni-slaying epics and more.
A relevant expression is "Oni ni Kanabô" ("strong beyond strong"). It can also have the proverbial meaning that great power should only be grated to the worthy.
Oni-gokko is the game of tag. The "it" in the game of tag is the "oni" in oni-gokko. Another interesting reference is the "oni warrior" Musashibo Benkei.

Konoko

More blahblah HERE

Konoko's name is never written in Oni, and so one can't really be sure what kanji/hiragana it would be composed of.

Given the many meanings of "ko", tentative decompositions and interpretations can get rather wild.

"Konoko" is actually a recurrent "word" in Japanese, but the meaning depends a lot on the immediate context.

Thus, Konoko no nanatsu no oiwai ni (a 1982 movie) can be translated
  • as "seven cheers for this child" if you don't know what the movie is about
  • as "for my daughter's seventh birthday" if you do know what it's about ^_^

So it can mean anything from "this child" to "my child" to "my daughter". In Konoko's case, the latter 2 sound better.

Shinatama

Among the animated dolls of the Edo era, a shinatama was a "trickster puppet", guarding the contents of a jewel box.

The puppet could also make the contents of the jewel box disappear, with a "magic trick" animation.
The initial decomposition of SHINA-TAMA in this case is probably "precious jewel".

Mukade

Mukade are giant, poisonous centipedes that are known for infesting Japanese houses. Several mukade species exist.
Mukade was also a mythical beast (also a giant centipede), which bothered dragons and was slain by a human warrior.

BGI

Placeholder name standing for "Bad Guys, Internations". Reinterpreted as "Be Good, Inc." by geyser

Development and hype

Hidden Messages in Oni Art & Trailer

From the Marathon Story page, long before Oni even came out: 

   I don't know if this has been covered before, but perhaps this is of interest.

   I got out my Oni notepad tonight (the freebie from the Action Sack) and the faint Kanji (Japanese characters) caught my eye. Behind the image of
Konoko there are faint vertical lines of Japanese text faintly visable. Faintly is the operating word here. There are several words seperated by ones
and zeros in each line. After squinting at these line for a while, I managed to translate a couple of them. Now these lines repeat, both within the
"sentence" and also across the page. So while there looks like there are about 20 lines or so, there are only six unique "sentences" that I can pick out.

   They are:

   shinrai ni atai suru hito inai (there is no one I can trust)
   kiki (this is the Oni kanji repeated twice) ... kurai shorai (dark future)
   kako no aru onna (a woman with a past)
   furu kontakuto akushon (full contact action)
   buramu (blam) korutana (cortana)
   warui keikan (bad cop)

   I don't know but I suspect this is the same kanji used in the trailer.

Source: http://marathon.bungie.org/story/halo_oct-dec99.html

N.B. they are actually hiragana/katakana rather than kanji.
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