Japanese Origin of the name Oregairu

momentie said:
Wow this is some real in depth effort, give yourself a pat on the back friend. I'd never even noticed that the show's name doesn't have a proper/direct English dub translation, this is some damn interesting stuff😎👍.

Testosterown said:
I couldn't find a satisfactory answer in English so I somehow ended down this rabbit hole of Japanese internet history, which was much more entertaining than I originally thought it would be. I don't normally try to explain Japanese concepts in English, so hopefully my explanation isn't too convoluted.

A simple Google search led me to these 2 pages:

https://dic.nicovideo.jp/a/%E4%BF%BA%E3%82%AC%E3%82%A4%E3%83%AB
https://www.tobu-satellite.jp/oregairuryakusyou-naze/

Guile:
Is everyone familiar with this "Go home and be a family man" Guile meme from the Street Fighter series?



The Japanese version of this phrase seems to be the origin of Oregairu, or more specifically, 俺ガイル. 俺 = ore = I/me, ガイル = gairu = Guile



So in the Japanese version, it says:

お前にも家族がいるだろう (translation: You probably have a family as well)
OR お前にも家族ガイルだろう

Both がいる and ガイル can be read as gairu.

The specific origin of the phrase 俺ガイル isn't too clear, but if we extrapolate from the above, then Guile is saying "I also have a family" or 俺にも家族がいる ＝俺ガイル = I'm Guile.

So this is where the members of 2channel (sort of like the Japanese equivalent of 4chan/reddit) thought it would be funny to append this double meaning phrase 俺ガイル (oregairu) to just about anything else in the same way we would use meme phrases.

Further research into this phrase seems to show that it doesn't have any particular meaning, rather it's just funny/dumb way of saying something (similar to how people might imitate how Yoda from Star Wars speak).

Name selection process:
Because the original name of the light novel was too long, the author's manager took it to twitter to find suggestions for an abbreviated name. I had to use the Wayback Machine to find the original blog post from 2011:

https://web.archive.org/web/20120712015554/http://d.hatena.ne.jp/watariwataru/20110215/1297794528

In this blog post the author goes through the 57 possible names suggested to him, and concluded that はまち (hamachi) and 俺ガイル (oregairu) were his two favorites but also said that he'll leave it up to the fans to say whatever name they see fit (although it appears that oregairu eventually became the official name).

Take these explanations with a grain of salt, as I'm actually not too knowledgeable about this series and am only trying to translate the author's thoughts based from the articles linked.

Hamachi basically means a young Japanese amberjack fish, to signify that the protagonist is still young and in the process of growing up.

Oregairu basically means "I'm here," or in the context of the novel's protagonist, "I've been there, done that too" or "That happened to me as well." The author also said he liked the simplicity of it, and judging from his age I wouldn't be surprised if he's a Street Fighter fan that grew up with the 1990's arcade era. On the same note, I wouldn't be surprised if a big portion of his fans at that time also grew up in the Street Fighter arcade era, along with 2channel and its slang, thus helping Oregairu pick up faster than any of the other names.

Bonus: Another one of the suggested names was 俺のラブはガイル (translation: My Love is Guile) to which the author responded with どんだけガイル好きだよ (translation: Holy crap how much do you guys love Guile!?).

ishoo-sama said:
I gotta ask my friend, why’d you give HoriMiya a 6.5?

IamTaki07 said:
It was just natural to me bc "Yahari ORE no seishun no love comedy ha machiGAteIRU"

Testosterown said:


So basically this was the best I explanation I could find in English, which really bugged me because I'm used to the way Japanese people abbreviate things (games specifically) and it's usually much more straight forward. The light novels that I have read also aren't this complicated.

Smash Brothers =スマッシュブラザーズ = Sumasshu Burazaazu = Suma Bura
PlayStation 5 = プレイステーション5 = Purei Suteeshonn 5 = Pure Sute 5

They usually just take the first bits of each word and shorten it that way.

To get something like Oregairu would be like if I started shortening "Game of Thrones" to "me hoes"

momentie said:


Feel free to read the review buddy😎, to be brief, the production values, while not bad clearly don't fit the narritive, the tone and direction are that of a serious romance or drama yet we're present with a ligth hearted romcom.

Furthermore while everyone got uber hyped about them rushing through the likes of the main duo getting together etc, they don't actually do anything with that new status quo.

The OST is fine but doesn't really fit alot of the time, and the art style, while I appreciated for homaging the manga, is generally animated pretty cheaply(a ridiculous reliance of chibi forms) with only about 3 backgrounds for 80+% of the show, which would be fine in some circumstances but doesn't match the tone they bizarely choose, and gives the whole thing a miss matched feel.

All told I really liked it but from an objective standpoint it's just weak, again I'm much more detailed in the proper review, I don't want to mess up this thread with walls of text 😊👍.

ishoo-sama said:

*SPOILER SPOILER IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE SHOW*
Ahh, I understand. Honestly, I couldn’t agree more with what you said about the tone. I was totally expecting something like a tear jerker, and was (a little disappointed when it was just light hearted all around... especially near the end, with the point when Miyamura returns and the snow scene.

momentie said:


I thougth I was pretty spoiler free 😂 but ya tone was definitely the biggest issue, it was genuinely really hard to tell what It wanted to be at any one given time. Again still fun just a shame it couldn't of been a little bit more😊👍.

ishoo-sama said:
agreed. and the spoiler warning isn’t for you lol i didn’t want to talk about the scenes and have it spoiled for someone, yk?

Edamame_GP said:
... i was planning on watching this series for a long time since it's on netflix ...