Comments on: Raito?

By: Jan

Jan — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 11:41:37 +0000

As I was a reader of Deathnote Manga long before the movies/anime came out, Raito was Light’s name in the Manga (I presume it was the kanatana version of Light ) but after a few volumes the translators used Light as Raito’s name and that’s how I’ve heard it since. Havent seen the anime so I presume they used Light in the anime, but In the movies I’m pretty sure they used Light as well.

Shrugs* doesn’t bother me much, but I still prefer the “japanese version” Raito though. I had to LOL at “Raito means Light in Japanese”

By: xxmikotonakadaixx

xxmikotonakadaixx — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 22:32:18 +0000

@Nominull: How would it sound wrong? Everybody in the anime has called him LIGHT, just with a slight accent. If there was a (for example), a Australian show that has a character named BOB, which the most of the Australian actors call "Bab", should WE call him "Bab"? No, using romajized name does not make you a weaboo per se, you're only a weaboo if you use the Japanese pronounciation for the heck of it. I'm actually against labeling people as weaboo over them using the littlest instance of romajized English words. However, if someone knows that "Killer" and "Kira" are the same, but uses "Kira" just for the sake of it sounding Japanese, then yes - it is sort of weaboo-ish. Most of the point of the post was pointing out how the dude said Raito was the "Japanese word" for Light, anyway. Now there's an anime fan who thinks he knows how to speak Japanese but fails miserably instead by speaking horrible ENGLISH.

By: Nominull

Nominull — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 22:15:30 +0000

I call him “Raito” because that’s what everybody in the anime called him. Calling him “Light” would just sound wrong, there is a huge distinction between the sounds of the two.

What, should we call his alter ego “Killer”? If we talk about “Kira”, does that make us hopeless weaboo?

By: xxmikotonakadaixx

xxmikotonakadaixx — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 19:43:26 +0000

@psgels: Yeah, I know that. I don’t think that people would be using that term if the manga-translating teams, as Skh point out, used “Light” instead of leaving the name romajized. Esspecially when the author wrote his name as “Light” in English at one point. It’s like what happened to Naruto, “Gai’s” name is supposed to be spelt GUY, but people spell it as Gai because of scanlations and the early manga.

… But we all know that Raito isn’t the Japanese word for Light, right? ;;

By: Skh

Skh — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 19:33:37 +0000

For the first few volumes, the teams who translated the manga used “Raito” instead of “Light”, so that could be a reason.

By: psgels

psgels — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 19:15:42 +0000

Basically, the manga was created in Japan. If Light’s name would be written down, it would be done in Japanese, not English. For that, the Katakana-alphabet was used, though it lacks the ability to spell “Li” and “ght”. So, his name was katakanificied, as I’d like to call it, into Raito. That’s probably why people refer to him like that.