AgProv
Do those anime manga series names sound as weird and random in the original Japanese as if somebody's opened a dictionary at random and stuck a pin in, or is this the way they're translated into approximate English?
Male, early sixties, Cranky old fart, at least two decades behind. So you have been warned. Functionally illiterate in several languages.
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Needs Clarification
, started by BlueIceTea on Jun 18th 2011 at 10:04:45 AM
"Awkward Zombie has very little to do with zombies, although there are a few times that there has been a Title Drop in the form of a Stealth Pun." I thought it was referring to the undead character the author plays in her Wo W comics.
God is God of truth, and thus of current webcomic example links. See also: Grammar Nazi Hedge Trimmer
would any work with 'Awesome' in its title be a YMMV example of this, seeing how the qualifier 'Awesome' is based on opinion and not fact?
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Nope. "The Awesome Adventures of Alex" is quite clearly not word salad. Simply having a word which may be agreed with to varying extents isn't enough; there has to be a jumble.
That was the amazing part. Things just keep going.
For live-action TV, what about 'Monty Python's Flying Circus'?
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Somewhere I heard that Monty Pythons Flying Circus was a DELIBERATE word-salad title. They wanted to make it nonsensical on purpose.
Does this trope also apply to EPISODES of a TV series, as well as to the series title itself?
There are some episodes of Star Trek The Original Series that give you ZERO clue as to what the episode is about. To this day, I still have to look up the episode description when faced with an episode title like "The Apple" or "Plato's Stepchildren".
Edited by tracer
Teejay
Ummm...who wrote this?
"Many guys I know refused to ass Fried Green Tomatoes for the simple reason that we had no clue what it was about (and our girlfriends made it obvious that it was a chickflick"
First of all, what is 'refusing to ass' something? And if I take the meaning of the sentence (many guys refused to see a film because they didn't know what it was about, on top of thinking it's a chick flick) does it really make it an example of this trope?
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I agree. I think it is not a good example, but even if it was it shoud be worded differently.
I just created a YKTTW thread, which I'm (temporarily) calling Dropped Title, about works whose names are enigmatic or unexplained. There seems to be a lot of overlap with this trope's "Examples Not Explained" section, but I'm not sure that they're the same. This trope seems (from the description) to be for names that sound a bit silly, whereas I'm trying to create a page for any work whose title is unexplained.
Should I simply put all my examples on this page? Continue as I'm going and create a whole new page? Something else?
Edited by BlueIceTea 'Crisis or no, nothing should interfere with tea!' Hide / Show Replies
The Crowner has determined that my examples belong under Word Salad Title. Before I add them to this page, I'm wondering if it would be possible to add a third category to the page, for titles that "Make Even Less Sense In Context". I'm thinking that some of my examples, and some of the ones already on the page, don't really sound like Word Salad on their own, but do sound strange when you try to connect them to the contents of the work.
Okay, well, as I didn't get any feedback, I've just added my examples under "Makes Just As Much Sense In Context". I've added all the works from the "Dropped Title" YKTTW discussion, except for the ones already listed uner Literary Allusion Title. And I don't want to hear anyone complaining that the works I've added don't really count as "Word Salad"! I know that many of them don't, and if it had been up to me, I would have listed them on their own page as a separate trope. But according to the Crowner, they fit this trope, so here's where they're going.
It's the name of the type of pot they're smoking. I'm pretty sure that's clarified near the beginning of the film.
BillyZRay
What about Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann? It literally translates as "Heaven-Piercing Crimson Lotus Enveloping Face."
I LIVE Beyond the Impossible.
{{Planescape}} Hijack
Cut this; it doesn't seem to be an example both for the reasons stated and because it's just one word.
- Hellsing. Apparently based on Dracula, although the character they are clearly trying to evoke was called "Van Helsing", which is now the name of a movie.
- This is a common problem, Japanese speakers not including the "van" part of Dutch-derived names. In Get Backers, the Dutch impressionist responsible for Starry Night is called simply "Gogh".
- Actually this is intentional, and it is meant to be a pun with Van Helsing and Hell. It plays with words a few other times, like "Alucard" being "Dracula" spelled backwards.
- This is a common problem, Japanese speakers not including the "van" part of Dutch-derived names. In Get Backers, the Dutch impressionist responsible for Starry Night is called simply "Gogh".
The "Cure" part of the Pretty Cure franchise is assumed to refer to the act of eliminating.. - I thought the title was intended as a backronymic reference to purikura (Print Club) photobooths?
Edited by ShiroiHane
Does Monty Python's Flying Circus count? The title doesn't really have anything to do with anything that happens in it and I believe that they came up with it because it just sounded interesting.