Have anime titles been steadily getting longer, and I just wasn't paying attention? It feels a lot like somebody took the logic of titling clickbait articles and applied it to anime.

In any case, I half-expect to see "Defeating Evil in Another World with this One Simple Trick that Heroes Don't Want You to Know!" sooner or later.

Peter Eng
--
My brain is a strange place.

>Have anime titles been steadily getting longer, and I just wasn't
>paying attention?

Yes indeed. Somewhere around the early 2010s they started resembling Fall Out Boy song names circa From Under the Cork Tree. The earliest one I can remember noticing was Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, which is the soul of brevity compared to some of its successors. :)

My Dress-Up Darling (which sort of has that kind of title in Japanese; the English one is much shorter) lampoons the trend beautifully with the name of the manga series Marin likes about a light novel author being hassled by a succubus.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Have anime titles been steadily getting longer, and I just wasn't
>paying attention? It feels a lot like somebody took the logic of
>titling clickbait articles and applied it to anime.
>
>In any case, I half-expect to see "Defeating Evil in Another World
>with this One Simple Trick that Heroes Don't Want You to Know!" sooner
>or later.
>
>Peter Eng
>--
>My brain is a strange place.

Not exactly. What's happening is Light Novel titles are getting longer, and more and more of those are being adapted nowadays.

You might be amused by this article (and some of the studies linked from it):

https://jgeekstudies.org/2020/11/09/my-light-novels-title-cant-be-this-short-the-evolution-of-light-novel-titles-in-another-world/

>
>Not exactly. What's happening is Light Novel titles are
>getting longer, and more and more of those are being adapted nowadays.
>

Okay, that makes sense.

>
>You might be amused by this article (and some of the studies linked
>from it):
>
>https://jgeekstudies.org/2020/11/09/my-light-novels-title-cant-be-this-short-the-evolution-of-light-novel-titles-in-another-world/

Nicely scientific, with subheadings that are references to anime. Yes, I was amused.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>Not exactly. What's happening is Light Novel titles are
>getting longer, and more and more of those are being adapted nowadays.

The story I heard is that a lot of light novels these days get their start on Japanese webnovel hosting sites (similar to Royal Road) and that one of the major sites for these doesn't allow a blurb, just a title.

Since readers have nothing to let them know what they're getting except the title, some the authors on the site simply used the concept of the story as a title, and here we are. It's now just the norm.

>The story I heard is that a lot of light novels these days get their
>start on Japanese webnovel hosting sites (similar to Royal Road) and
>that one of the major sites for these doesn't allow a blurb, just a
>title.
>
>Since readers have nothing to let them know what they're getting
>except the title, some the authors on the site simply used the concept
>of the story as a title, and here we are. It's now just the norm.

"The street finds its own uses for things."
- William Gibson, "Burning Chrome" (Omni, July 1982)

-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Since readers have nothing to let them know what they're getting
>except the title, some the authors on the site simply used the concept
>of the story as a title, and here we are. It's now just the norm.

That's similar to the logic I've heard, which is that new readers often don't bother reading the back cover blurb of light novels, so they use the title as the blurb.

What makes this weird is that several of these off the top of my head almost seems to be running on *early concept* titles. “Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In The Dungeon” for instance, in which aside from the guy falling in love with the the sword lady who saved him, has nothing to do with what the series is about, with him doing nothing to try to get any of the girls who surround him.

Apparently, that's the editor's fault. According to TVTropes:

The author originally wanted to call it the much shorter Familia Myth, but their editor insisted they go with a longer one. It's especially silly because the protagonist never attempts to do what the title describes.

Huh. You know that's weird, because I actually never checked out that anime because the title just made me think it was a stupid harem isekai with a pervy/inappropriate MC or something and I ignored it for the longest time. But if that's actually not true I might have a reason to look at it.

Just goes to show how this thing can actually backfire sometimes.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a LOT of cute girls in it, but the main character, who’s name escapes me, I’ve been trying to think of it since I brought it up, doesn’t do anything in particular to gather them, or have much interest in them, and most of them don’t have much interest in him either. D&D Love Hina this ain’t :3

LAST EDITED ON Jan-19-23 AT 02:05 PM (EST)
 
Bell Cranel. To be fair, several of them wouldn't say no if he ever asked, but he's only really interested in one who happens to be one of the strongest adventurers around and Bell spends most of his time struggling to catch up to her. The rest of the time is spent getting the crap beat out of him for his 'always do the right thing, regardless of the consequences' mentality.

>Huh. You know that's weird, because I actually never checked out that
>anime because the title just made me think it was a stupid harem
>isekai with a pervy/inappropriate MC or something and I ignored it for
>the longest time. But if that's actually not true I might have a
>reason to look at it.
>
>Just goes to show how this thing can actually backfire sometimes.

Yeah. It's basically "Idealistic kid goes to Adventuretown, Shenanigans Ensue".
Worldbuilding based on "What if the economy was literally based on adventurers going into the dungeon and killing monsters".