For a long time, I was bothered by really inaccurate pronunciations of anime words. I can tell you of the time I was in the comic store and heard a guy remarking that there was a ton of “magna.” I’m sure you’ve seen the people talking about how Sa-soo-ke is their favorite Naruto character. Then something changed.

I’m not sure if it was the realization that as much as I’ve studied Japanese, my own language skills aren’t perfect, but at some point I realized that there’s a good deal of futility in trying to change the way people pronounce Japanese words, particularly anime ones. Even the word “anime” itself falls under this scrutiny. Some people say “annimay” because it’s closer to the word animation, others try to go full on with the Japanese pronunciation with “ah-nee-meh,” and you’ll hear variations every which way. Who’s right? Is there any need to have a right or a wrong pronunciation, as long as we understand one another? Should we be criticizing people who pronounce “karaoke” the non-Japanese way? What if you say it the Japanese way and people have no idea what you’re saying? Should we be criticizing people who pronounce any foreign word outside of the pronunciation in its original language?

English has tons of variations even within the United States, let alone the rest of the world, and while those variations aren’t as drastic as, say, the dialects in China, the result is that you get a whole slew of differing pronunciations for the same word. And then you want to throw Japanese words on top of that?

It’s crazy I tell you.