I usually remove them because the English distributors don't really use them either. I'd say go with what the official English subs are using. Seems like in the case of this series it's "Kotarou" and "Koya" (love me some inconsistency).

These are not accent marks, these are separate vowels. Kōya and Koya are different names, with different meaning and different pronunciation. There is no reason to follow incorrect practices of US distributors.

Thanks for the response, Shei!

Glad you saw this thread, Piotr, it was of course made after I noticed some Kōya/Koya-type differences of opinion on several pages over the past weeks.

As for the macron, my mistake for saying 'accent mark', old habit… Long and short vowels, which to stick with (official translations or the more correct long vowel written form), I'll let you and Shei figure out which one to use. There's always alternate names for real people, you do have to pick one for character names. I'd just be happy to know which to use in this database.

@piotrdrag said:

These are not accent marks, these are separate vowels. Kōya and Koya are different names, with different meaning and different pronunciation. There is no reason to follow incorrect practices of US distributors.

I mean, it's not per se an "incorrect practice" to romanize the ō as o. If it were, then writing Tokyo instead of Tōkyō would also be incorrect. It's just way more common to just straight up drop the macron when romanizing Japanese words to English because English does not have this diacritic. Obviously the pronunciation would be different though.

Long and short vowels, which to stick with (official translations or the more correct long vowel written form), I'll let you and Shei figure out which one to use. There's always alternate names for real people, you do have to pick one for character names. I'd just be happy to know which to use in this database.

I don't think we've ever had an official discussion on this so I can ask internally and see what the other mods / Travis think.

@Sheigutn said:

I don't think we've ever had an official discussion on this so I can ask internally and see what the other mods / Travis think.

I'd be interested in seeing a consensus from the mods and Travis. So we have a rule, going forward. I don't have any particularly strong opinions on this subject. When it comes to anime, I've seen enough discussions here to carefully “pick my battles”. 😸 I also have an oddball not-O in my own name, and don't mind it becoming õ/ô/ò/ó/ö, etc.

Would you be okay with a majority vote, Piotr? Even if the house typically (always) “wins”.

@Sheigutn said: I mean, it's not per se an "incorrect practice" to romanize the ō as o. If it were, then writing Tokyo instead of Tōkyō would also be incorrect. It's just way more common to just straight up drop the macron when romanizing Japanese words to English because English does not have this diacritic. Obviously the pronunciation would be different though.

“Tokyo” is the exception to the rule, though. Basically when a word is sufficiently established (think decades, or even centuries), it is customary to use the adapted version (Tokyo, Kyoto, shogi etc.). For other words, including proper names, there are the Hepburn romanization rules that employ macrons to mark long vowels. Some sites (like MyAnimeList, and Crunchyroll in their subtitles, albeit inconsistently) do drop the macrons for convenience of typing on a QWERTY keyboard, but they still distinguish between short and long vowels: they write ou instead of ō, aa instead of ā, ee instead of ē, uu instead of ū. Simply dropping the macrons is the worst possible option, since we could possibly have two characters in a show named Kōya and Koya who would now be spelled the same, causing confusion.

When in doubt, I recommend following what AnimeNewsNetwork does in regards to romanization, since they almost always get it right.

@Giger said: Would you be okay with a majority vote, Piotr? Even if the house typically (always) “wins”.

I think this is ultimately something only the owner (and their moderators) can decide, for better or for worse (there are some really bad rules about anime on here, as I’m sure you know.)

@piotrdrag said:

I think this is ultimately something only the owner (and their moderators) can decide, for better or for worse (there are some really bad rules about anime on here, as I’m sure you know.)

Oh, yes. I don't agree with a good number of the rules. Which is fine. After the TV series logging app I use got an update – making it possible to even find, say, the last Attack on Titan episodes/specials/whatever-you-want-to-call-them, a few of the issues were alleviated. It's still a hassle to have… [what's an example?]… 25 Tomo-chan wa Onnanoko! “episodes”, but oh well.

Anyway, let us know how the discussion goes, Shei.

Definitely agree with you guys on some rules being bad (in general and also for anime). Unfortunately I have no choice to enforce them because they've been around for way longer than I've been a mod (which is like almost exactly a year now).

It's still a hassle to have… [what's an example?]… 25 Tomo-chan wa Onnanoko! “episodes”, but oh well.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the segment rule either. It would just be way better to have an actual segment feature on this site that would allows us to add several named segments to an episode and then be able to use the segments in episode groups. Unfortunately, as you've probably noticed, development on this site is relatively slow, so I'm not anticipating this to become a thing in the near future Adding onto that, I feel like we'd also have fewer content reports complaining about episode orders if Plex / Jellyfin / Emby / SeriesGuide / any other tracking apps supported our episode groups.

Anyway, let us know how the discussion goes, Shei.

I asked the others to hop into this discussion, but I can't guarantee they will.

@Sheigutn said:

Definitely agree with you guys on some rules being bad (in general and also for anime). Unfortunately I have no choice to enforce them because they've been around for way longer than I've been a mod (which is like almost exactly a year now).

Didn't know it had “only” been a year, but it's all good. Based on my limited viewing of the heated anime discussions, I haven't seen you (too) involved in those threads.

It's still a hassle to have… [what's an example?]… 25 Tomo-chan wa Onnanoko! “episodes”, but oh well.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the segment rule either. It would just be way better to have an actual segment feature on this site that would allows us to add several named segments to an episode and then be able to use the segments in episode groups. Unfortunately, as you've probably noticed, development on this site is kind of slow, so I'm not anticipating this to become a thing in the near future Adding onto that, I feel like we'd also have fewer content reports complaining about episode orders if Plex / Jellyfin / Emby / SeriesGuide / any other tracking apps supported our episode groups.

I'd have to agree with all of this. :) It took some time to get the app designer to include the episode Specials, I have no idea how the Plex-type servers and such handle updates and changes. But, getting something that more closely resembles “standard” seasons out there would solve quite a few issues. I can understand both sides when Season 3 continues to use “episode 34”, etc. for S03E10 on the official website. Anyhoo, this has been reported/posted 8000 times already…

I asked the others to hop into this discussion, but I can't guarantee they will.

I'd still like to see a naming rule appear. Even if they don't have time to join here, there are always polls, DMs, emails, homing pigeons.

P.S. I was hoping there'd be a moratorium on the changes, Piotr. I don't typically look too closely at overviews, I just copy and paste them. When they have also gotten the macrons-tweaking, it gets even more confusing. More changes back and forth. Rinse and repeat until someone locks the episode overview. Hope that makes sense.

@Giger said:

P.S. I was hoping there'd be a moratorium on the changes, Piotr. I don't typically look too closely at overviews, I just copy and paste them. When they have also gotten the macrons-tweaking, it gets even more confusing. More changes back and forth. Rinse and repeat until someone locks the episode overview. Hope that makes sense.

I’m not in a habit of changing official synopses (apart from an occasional typo fix). Here I wanted to keep consistency with what’s currently on the Cast page. I will refrain from making changes to existing casts until a decision is made.

@Sheigutn said:

I asked the others to hop into this discussion, but I can't guarantee they will.

Looks like nothing was decided, which is fine. I hope it's still on an internal discussions list.

I'll keep adding names as usual, first using the credits if possible, the official website, or the aforementioned AnimeNewsNetwork. After that, the back and forth changes can recommence (Kotarō/Kotaro/Kotarou), I'm staying out of it until/if a rule appears. :)

@piotrdrag – Same goes for title changes and overview tweaks. I still don't fully agree with these changes, but it seems to go back to consistency, so as long as the mods are okay with deviations from the Crunchyroll/HIDIVE/etc. details.

Oh, and Shei: another little JJK thing. Cheers.