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Post by Darth Escargot on Aug 23, 2020 9:57:41 GMT -5
We had a long discussion about this on the original Zoidfans Yahoogroup way back when the BF first came out. I'm not defending Nazi references in toy names necessarily, but there are two things that you kind of need to understand.
1) The word "Führer" just means "leader" in German. It's the title that Hitler gave himself and as a German speaker, I can tell you unequivocally that there isn't a single person in the German speaking world that doesn't immediately recognize this word as a reference to Hitler, but it's absolutely also used in its original meaning still (especially in compound nouns, e.g. "Reiseführer" = travel guidebook), and so it's not really exactly the same thing as naming the Zoid after Hitler even though there's more than a bit of a connotation there.
2) German terminology and Nazi references are freaking everywhere in Japanese pop culture. Just look at all the Gundam suits that have German names either entirely or for things like their weapons (incidentally, why do you think the Schneider unit for the LZ has a German name?), leave alone the fact that the Zeons are pretty much styled as straight-up space Nazis. I mean, sure, as far as the story goes, it's more complicated, but "Sieg Zeon" is at least as obvious a Nazi reference as "Berserk Führer". As someone from the German speaking world, I'm gonna say it does look like a pretty offensive form of cultural appropriation to me, which is to say nothing of the fact that the Japanese and the Nazis were allies in the war and maybe this isn't something you want to proudly invoke in toy names, but I'll leave that up to the Japanese to decide.
So in short, yeah, it's a stupid name and I was never comfortable with it, but this kind of thing is so common in Japan that I'm having a hard time singling out Tomy for this one misstep. It frankly bothers me a lot more that it's one of the coolest Zoids in the entire NJR and it's piloted by this annoying little twerp in the show that makes me have to turn it off after 20 seconds.
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Post by bladeligerzero94 on Aug 23, 2020 14:33:25 GMT -5
It was also piloted by Blake in Fuzors.
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Post by Snowflake on Aug 23, 2020 16:57:19 GMT -5
Grow up. It's a bad-guy zoid.
Reminds me of when Hasbro was getting crap because Megatron sounded too much like 'megaton' and they had to explain he's the bad guy, and the 80s execs were like 'oh okay'
nevermind that's a unit of measure.
Anyway people who fret about words are the real nazis, I hope people understand that
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Post by bladeligerzero94 on Aug 23, 2020 19:32:39 GMT -5
I'm not offended by the fact that this zoid was named by Hitler. I just find it weird.
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Post by dchan on Aug 23, 2020 22:46:48 GMT -5
Snowflake - don't really agree with your last statement, since there are actual self-identified neo-Nazis alive and organized today. I also think there's way too much history and nuance in language to be able to sum up all of "people who fret about words" in a single category. But that's just how I see it. @darth Escargot - Fascinating. Thanks for sharing that, I had no idea how word "fuhrer" is perceived and used among German speakers. It's definitely not a Tomy-specific thing, and I actually like the change to "Fury". Probably one of the better localization changes in my opinion.
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Post by Leon35 on Aug 23, 2020 23:30:02 GMT -5
While I cannot speak for others, I can speak for myself. As a Jewish man, the name does not bother me. The Zoid is not named after Hitler. It does not make me think of Hitler. It's just 2 german words that loosly mean "Berserk Leader" and the Hasbro name change is fine. The original name is honestly a little on the nose but it doesn't change the fact that its inconsequential. This entire thread is mostly just bladeligerzero94 double posting stream of consciousness thoughts about the name, even after the specifics have already been explained and detailed. please just let this be. Snowflake: Holy crap that is a very bad takeaway... |
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Post by Hanyoutai on Aug 24, 2020 3:10:55 GMT -5
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Post by Darth Escargot on Aug 24, 2020 4:16:27 GMT -5
It's just 2 german words that loosly mean "Berserk Leader"  Sorry, not to drag this out even more, but since you brought it up and I'm a German teacher in real life and I just can't help myself - "Berserk" is actually not a German word, the German noun is "Berserker". That's another thing that's always bothered me about the name Berserk Führer, it just doesn't make any sense because it's an English and a German word slapped together. It might as well be called Grr Kartoffel Killbad Saurus. |
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Post by Snowflake on Aug 24, 2020 16:19:53 GMT -5
"Berserk" is actually not a German word, the German noun is "Berserker". a berserker is one who wears a berserk, a shirt made out of bear skin. I thought everyone knew that. The English adjective berserk is a backformation of course, but it's still a word. Certainly "Berserkerführer" would be more grammatical, but plenty of zoid names are just 'noun noun' like shadow fox or blade liger, it doesn't have to be shadowed fox or bladed liger. That said, I'm sure it's intended to be a mixture of english and deutsch. I'm trying to think of other language-mixing examples in zoid names, and I'm coming up blank, but I did realize that, with a little understanding of spelling variations, Zeek Dober is 'victory dove' and that amuses me. |
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Post by Leon35 on Aug 25, 2020 2:36:18 GMT -5
It's just 2 german words that loosly mean "Berserk Leader" Sorry, not to drag this out even more, but since you brought it up and I'm a German teacher in real life and I just can't help myself - "Berserk" is actually not a German word, the German noun is "Berserker". That's another thing that's always bothered me about the name Berserk Führer, it just doesn't make any sense because it's an English and a German word slapped together. It might as well be called Grr Kartoffel Killbad Saurus. You are not digging! I genuinely appreciate the correction. This is good to know. |
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Post by Darth Escargot on Aug 26, 2020 1:55:34 GMT -5
"Berserk" is actually not a German word, the German noun is "Berserker". a berserker is one who wears a berserk, a shirt made out of bear skin. I thought everyone knew that. The English adjective berserk is a backformation of course, but it's still a word. Certainly "Berserkerführer" would be more grammatical, but plenty of zoid names are just 'noun noun' like shadow fox or blade liger, it doesn't have to be shadowed fox or bladed liger. That said, I'm sure it's intended to be a mixture of english and deutsch. I'm trying to think of other language-mixing examples in zoid names, and I'm coming up blank, but I did realize that, with a little understanding of spelling variations, Zeek Dober is 'victory dove' and that amuses me. My guess is the Dober part of Zeekdober's name comes from the Doberman breed of dog that it closely resembles. Anyway, you're right of course, the history of Zoids is full of weird borrowings from English and German and it's pretty silly to get worked up about this one specific name. Maybe what bothers me about it is that compound nouns are extremely common in German, but compounding doesn't always work the same way it does in English, yet pop culture has a tendency to slap German words together as if they're English, and it just irks me because I'm a pedantic idiot. Speaking of which, I'm just watching CC again, and it'll never not be funny to me how Van Freiheit somehow became Van Flyheight. |
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Post by Snowflake on Aug 26, 2020 16:41:44 GMT -5
My guess is the Dober part of Zeekdober's name comes from the Doberman breed of dog that it closely resembles. Anyway, you're right of course, the history of Zoids is full of weird borrowings from English and German and it's pretty silly to get worked up about this one specific name. Maybe what bothers me about it is that compound nouns are extremely common in German, but compounding doesn't always work the same way it does in English, yet pop culture has a tendency to slap German words together as if they're English, and it just irks me because I'm a pedantic idiot. Speaking of which, I'm just watching CC again, and it'll never not be funny to me how Van Freiheit somehow became Van Flyheight. Yes of course it's dobermann, but the funny part is that the dog was named after a guy, and his last name derives from 'dove man' so it's like, meaning-by-proxy. I get super irked by all the mistakenly transliterated german and italian, yeah. I mean, they're using western words, we shouldn't stumble so much over that just because they're written in someone else's phonetic alphabet. On the other hand, there are things you just have to slowly learn from exposure to different anime. There's lots of 'zeke' characters whose name turns out to be Sieg, such as the one in Xenoblade 2. But then you see the full name is Siegfried but it's written 'jifuritto' and you just have to get used to that. It's how they adapt the slightly different sounds in those languages. Similarly, his dad's name is written Zērihhi and it puzzled me for a decent amount of time before remembering Richter gets written Rihitaa, so that's Zürich. All because they want to represent the soft palatal german ch, but they can't use 'hu' because that's fu... (Then the silly but charming British dub gives them all goofy fantasy names instead. Whattayougonnado.) |
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Post by bladeligerzero94 on Aug 26, 2020 19:08:27 GMT -5
You think the Sturm Fuhrer/Storm Fury should get an HMM on it's own?
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Post by Maethius on Aug 27, 2020 15:58:05 GMT -5
Technically, wouldn't those be CAS kits? After all, BF was designed as a counterpart to LZ and was intended from the beginning to have armor sets.
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