So, what's the pun behind "Light Yagami"?
this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2025
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Just looked it up, and I'm seeing that his name is a sort of contradiction. His first name is "Light", and the characters in his last name mean "night god".
It sounds like sort of a "light vs dark" / "good vs evil" wordplay, although I don't know if that counts as a pun.
And they spell "Light" with the Kanji for moon. (夜神 月) So just the reading of the Kanji is "Moon Nightgod".
Extra Funfact: His pen name " Kira" means "glitter/sparkle". As in stars are "kirakira".
it's supposed to be killer (キラー), but japanese is excellent at butchering foreign languages.
The worst part of Japanese is having to learn Chinese just to read and write in Japanese
I was living in Japan when Naruto first released. I recognized his name because it's the little pink and white swirly fishcake slice they put on ramen.
His full name is Uzumaki Naruto, which translates to "Whirlpool Fishcake." So of course, his greatest tool/weapon is a swirling ball of concentrated energy in his hands. And he's obsessed with ramen.
Negima! also released while I was living in Japan, and the main character's name, "Negi," basically means "Green Onion" in Japanese. He's from Wales, where the national symbol is a Welsh onion (same thing).
Negi is a 10-yr old genius mage who takes on a teaching job at a private academy. His students, who are all older than him, sometimes call him "Negi-bozu," which is an honorific that's basically like calling a child "kiddo" or "sport." But "Negibozu" is also a slang term meaning "onion head," which is a way to refer to someone as being young and inexperienced.
And it's not just the Japanese language. The Japanese love English and try to squeeze it into their pop culture everywhere they can, whether it makes sense or not.
I became obsessed with the Berserk manga while I was there. The main character is named "Guts" (Gattsu), which is just an English word.
It not only describes how he was found (a baby nestled in the eviscerated guts of his dead mother who was hanged while pregnant with him), but also his determination and extreme willpower. Dude never gives up, no matter how much the situation is stacked against him. He's got real guts.
Similarly, One Piece stars "Monkey D. Luffy," who is basically a human monkey. He's dumb, a wild child, constantly getting into trouble and scrapping with people. Plus he loves to climb stuff. With his rubber powers, he can stretch and climb pretty much anything.
His powers in Japanese are the "gomu-gomu" ability, which just means "rubber-rubber." All the devil fruit power names in One Piece are just describing the ability in Japanese.
His crew member, "Usopp," is a habitual liar. He has a long nose like Pinocchio, and "Uso" means "to lie" in Japanese.
Another crew member, "Zoro," is an expert swordsman, just like the classic Disney hero Zorro.
There are puns everywhere in Japanese anime, but those are the first few that came to mind from my experience there.
Not to forget:
ONI GIRI
Bro u hungry or what?
the classic Disney hero Zorro
“Disney hero”?? Zorro dates to 1919, although Disney did make a movie about 40 years later…
I didn't even know Disney had a Zorro movie. Reminds me of this other Disney Character Hercules.
The classic Disney Hero Hercules. I heard the greek made up some huge story about him and his whole family later.
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Frieren is the same kind of stuff. All the names are misused German words that describe the defining trait of the character in question.
It's like OP took the Japanese word for the trait, tossed it through Google Translate and used whatever came out as the name for the character.
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Sometimes you don't even need to learn Japanese. Dragonball characters are like 75% English transliterations.
Kuririn
Frieren is a big offender too. Everyone and everything is just a feeling or item in German pronounced in some weird way.
When you know German and guy called Lügner shows up, why does anyone trust him? (literally means liar)
Or when a guy called Stark(strong) thinks he is weak. I wonder what power the girl called Laufen(running) has hmmmm
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You know whats the worst? English Transliterations where the family name is something like Alan or Rodderick and the characters first names are Fitzgerald or Caldwell. And some translators can't figure it out so they type up the name Gram as Garham or the name Alice as Arisu.
Bobson Dugnutt is perfection.
Sleve McDichael lets you know right away what you're in for.
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Meanwhile, American names in a Japanese game:
Honestly though Im impressed how well they managed to make those names sound Americanand nonsensical at the same time
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DBZ pun names even cross over into English sometimes. Vegeta and Bulmas kids are Trunks and Bra. King Cold's kids are Freiza (Freezer) and Cooler. Saiyanss are from planet Vegeta (short for Vegetables) and all of their names are modified vegetables like Kakarot (carrot), Raditz (Radish), Nappa (Napa Cabbage), Broli (Broccoli). Mr. Satan's daughter is Videl (anagram for Devil). Bibidi, Babidi, and Buu (Bibbidi-babbidi-boo from Disney Cinderella movie). Bubbles is named after Michael Jackson's chimp. Whis and Beerus are Whiskey and Beers, and Champa is Champagne. King Piccolo's minions are Piano, Tambourine, Cymbal, and Drum, all instruments. There's a ton.
Without knowing any Japanese, I feel I kinda knew this back in middle school.
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Some say Japanese is…mildly difficult. Like three chili pepper level.
Speaking Japanese is mildly difficult.
Reading Kanji makes even native adults cry.
I imagine it's easy, with English as a starting point, up until you get into the larger set of pictograms.
It's more difficult from first-language English because the languages are so different, but Japanese is fundamentally a very simple language. There's no complicated articles, plurals, prepositions, etc. There's not 100 different verb conjugations (like Spanish for example), there's only a few basic ones that can be used indiscriminately for first-, second-, and third-person. You don't really need to use pronouns and most syntax can be omitted if it doesn't add necessary context.
The biggest thing making Japanese an "easy" language to learn is the huge amount of learning material available. It's probably second only to English (and maybe Spanish) in the amount of popular TV, movie, and music that can be used for practice.
Even kanji is not really difficult once you get into it; only time-consuming.
The syntax is fine, but learning kanji can be grueling
Yup, kanjis made me drop my attempt of learning Japanese a few years ago. I got through the two sets of kanas okay (though シ and ツ being completely different characters is bullshit), but then I got to kanjis, and realised how illogical many of them are, like they often have multiple meanings and pronunciations depending on context, or the same sound syllable often can be written as multiple kanjis depending on the meaning, and I noped the fuck out.
Coming from Hungarian, English is already pretty bad in that you can't always tell how a word is pronounced from how it's written down*, Japanese is like that up to 11.
* E.g. even after years of fluency I sometimes can't remember if the "ch" in "chore" and "chasm" are pronounced like in "chord" or "choice".
(edit: spelling)
Your asterisk example is correct. For those less fluent: The "ch" in "chore" is the same as in "choice" and the "ch" in "chasm" is the same as "chord".
Which is yet another example that english is really just three languages in a trench coat that mugs other languages in dark alleys for spare syntax.
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Required reading material includes the English localization of Ace Attorney in order to acclimate yourself.
Holy fuck I've been playing AA5 in Japanese for practice, and the names kill me, both for being stupid and/or for making me sad that I don't get the puns right away. But I've laughed at a couple already, and looking at the localization comparisons (French too) is entertaining.
But on a serious note I fucking HATE reading when the prosecutor of this game, Blackquill (Yugami in JP ver) talks because he speaks with this delinquent/yankee + archaic fusion that is absolute hell for an intermediate learner to read. Like if he would just talk normally, I'd know immediately what he's saying, but then bro drops some edo-period word and I have to look up sword metaphors.
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Naming things is hard okay
Like in Reincarnated as a Slime, when Rimuru names all the monsters: that's actually just a power fantasy for the writer imagining being able to just shit out endless names when needed. Rimuru's subsequent mana exhaustion is just an allegory for the author's own exhaustion after having to come up with names for that scene. /s
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As a Japanese person, I've always hated this trope. It just feels so lazy.
Light Yagami
It's not just a japan thing.
Comics do it a lot. Especially DC.
Edward Nygma, Harley Quinn, Victor Fries, Roy G. Bivolo, Julian Gregory Day, Scott Free, ...
But Marvel has a whole bunch too:
Mar-Vell, Telford Porter, Cassandra Nova, Klara Prast, Jack Russell...
Ah, you're right. I didn't grow up reading DC or Marvel, so I was under the impression that Western comics didn't do that as much. Another one I don't like is characters having names for each one of their attacks and screaming it out loud. As much as I love shonen mangas, it always felt super weird. I'd be very interested in knowing when/why these tropes became popular.
I feel like in trying to be clever with wordplay, sometimes nuance and suspense is removed from the story. SMT:IV for example has a character that shows up and is kind of out of place, just a regular (but weird) school girl roaming the streets of a demon infested Tokyo with little care for the situation. It's obvious that there's more to her than meets the eyes, and the writers are trying to set up for some kind of reveal, but her name is so on the nose that there's no need to speculate who she really is.
She's called "Hikaru", and anyone that's played any SMT game and has a general idea of what usually goes down will clock her as Lucifer the moment her name is established.
Then again, it's not like Thorman, Lous Cyphre, or Louisa Ferre are any less on the nose.
Mandatory mention of Amagi Brilliant Park where many character names are based on American rappers.
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It gets fun though, because now you have context and can understand so many jokes that translators just put something else or don't realize it's a pun and translate literally.
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