Thursday, June 2, 2005

Anime Junkie Trash



Reader Peng Guo emails:

"Tian, Being a fan of Hanzismatter, I'd like to show you something. I entered the store, 'Hot Topic' and discovered the t-shirt with a kanji. I wonder, how does the (the simpified form of ) connect to the words, 'Anime Junkie'? The meanings of the kanji, 'discard' or 'terminate', aren't close to the words..."

The slang meaning of "junkie" is "one who has an insatiable interest or devotion".

Perhaps the designer of this t-shirt wants to tell everyone that anime fans are "waste" and they need to be labeled as "trash" and "discarded".

= abrogate, terminate, discard


19 comments:

  1. And that's the gospel truth.

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  2. My guess:
    Person A: Hey, I need you to look up how to write "junkie" in Chinese
    Person B: [flips through dictionary] Um, "junkie" isn't here. How about "junk"?
    Person A: Yeah, close enough. Goths can't read this stuff anyway.

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  3. Interestingly, while anime is Japanese, 废 is not used in Japanese at all.

    廢 (traditional)
    廃 (Japanese)
    废 (simplified)

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  4. God I hate anime fans.

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  5. Perhaps the designer of this t-shirt wants to tell everyone that anime fans are "waste" and they need to be labeled as "trash" and "discarded".

    Hey, dead-on. Never thought I'd agree with a t-shirt from Hot Topic.

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  6. haha! this is so lame! i @#&$'ing absolutely hate kanji/hanzi abuse. it makes me want to punch the guy wearing it then laugh at him.

    the designer probably knows absolutely nothing about Japanese nor Chinese and was just looking for a way to cash in on the trend-oids. wouldn't it be oh-so-cool to have a kanji/hanzi/anime reference on your shirt?

    anime is Japanese, but the character under it is Chinese. the two DO NOT jive.

    in japanese:
    junk: ゴミ gomi (written in katakana)
    junkie: ジャンキー (katakana, simple transliteration imported directly from english)
    anime addict/addicted to anime: アニメ中毒

    in any case, this T-shirt is absolute crap and i don't think there's any irony or inside joke involved. it's made by a moron for morons.

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  7. excuse me for saying but this t-shirt is totally awsome. i can't help it if some of us like anime. all of you who are giving bad comments about this shirt are racists. that is the simple truth.

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  8. i LOVE anime! just because that symbol means trash or discard does not mean anything. besides. who needs to know what it stands for. it looks cool on a t-shirt since anime is japanese and that is a japanese symbol. no one WANTS to know what it means. except for losers like all of you who are giving this t-shirt bad reports.

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  9. Anime fans, go fuck yourselves.

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  10. How can liking anime or not make someone a racist? It is just type of illustration. They may be entertaining if you have just recently discovered them, but to people who grow up with them, they are not exciting anymore.

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  11. TO "it looks cool on a t-shirt since anime is japanese and that is a japanese symbol"

    go back to school and learn, the character is Chinese. Whoever made the shirt clearly can't find his own ass with both hands, the same goes to you, buddy.

    Now kneel down and accept my Bukkake.

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  12. The whole idea of using random words from another language because they 'look cool' is ludicrously superficial. Like, I'm Chinese, and I think Latin (an European language) is cool, but I would never think of wearing a T-shirt with some random Latin words on it just for that... If you think Japanese and Chinese are all that interesting, take a class or at least buy a dictionary.

    shi-hsia

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  13. I would wear a tshirt with random latin on it in a heartbeat! but I'm just weird that way.

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  14. No, it's not cool they used a random word to fill space on a T-shirt. However, they do the same thing in other contries, with nonsensical English words plastered all over clothing.

    Yes, anime originate from Japan and that is a Chinese character- so what? Japanese characters are just simplied versions taken from the Chinese alphabet anyways.

    And finally... anime is cool, bitches. 'Nough said.

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  15. While I could insult both sides of this argument for touching themselves too much, or not being touched enough by there significan others (if any) I decided agasint it, instead to make a suggestion: quit arguing like ten year olds. If you like anime, cool, if you don't, its your choice. Most of us don't want to here you bitch.

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  16. re: anon, "Yes, anime originate from Japan and that is a Chinese character- so what? Japanese characters are just simplied versions taken from the Chinese alphabet anyways."

    this sentence makes me cry. japanese "characters" (if you mean kanji) are chinese characters. they're not simplified versions taken from the chinese "alphabet," because there is no alphabet inherent in chinese writing. i suppose you could say that pinyin romanization uses the roman alphabet, but then you'd also be saying that kanji is just simplified forms of the abcs.

    however, if you're saying that the kana syllabaries are modified from kanji themselves, then yes, that's true, but none of the kana signs have actually come from this particular character that's on the t-shirt. that's cuz the character on the t-shirt is a simplified chinese character that's only used in china, and not in japan (as many have mentioned before).

    it's like someone making a shirt celebrating bollywood, but then putting thai script all over it instead of devanagari. sure thai script is indic, but it's got nothing to do with india or indian movies. how could that be valid in any way?

    re: van helsing, i don't want to burst your bubble, but a lot of them _are_ ten years old.

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  17. "Most of us don't want to here you bitch."

    I know this is a site dealing with grammatical errors in Asian languages, but if you're going to smack someone down verbally on a webpost, you might as well apply the same rules to the English language. HEAR is the word you're looking for.

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  18. I'm a little tired of all the anime fan bashing going on in here. Not all of us are complete tards like the above posters. I'm not claiming to be fluent in Japanese, but I've studied it for 5 years. While it's not the same as Chinese, I have respect for both languages and cultures and don't go around wearing hanzi/kanzi I don't understand.

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