I kind of don't like Romaji.

I never encountered romaji in my studies.

The only time it kinda bothers me is if it's tacked onto the English name of a series. I'm not going to call it "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba". It's either Demon Slayer or Kimetsu no Yaiba. Pick one or the the other instead of making it unecessarily longer. Same with KonoSuba. I'm never going to call that series "God's Blessing on This Wonderful World!" or it's full Japanese name, but putting "KonoSuba" in front of the English title just looks dumb to me.

@FanofAction
It's because of name/brand recognition.
Either that or you essentially make a fanbase schism.

@thewiru Doesn't make much sense when so many series don't do that.

@FanofAction
The ones that do are the ones that are already well known for their original name or nickname.

sometimes when i watch anime on platforms like Hulu, they will sometimes have romaji subs for the opening, which is pretty ugly and honestly pointless.
I'm fine with romanized transcriptions for common loan words from the Japanese language like sushi, karaoke, anime. Heck, I probably also used 'seiyuu' in lieu of saying 'voice actress' in some of my previous posts too.

Yet you say "anime" instead of "cartoon".
Curious.

The only time it kinda bothers me is if it's tacked onto the English name of a series. I'm not going to call it "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba". It's either Demon Slayer or Kimetsu no Yaiba. Pick one or the the other instead of making it unecessarily longer. Same with KonoSuba. I'm never going to call that series "God's Blessing on This Wonderful World!" or it's full Japanese name, but putting "KonoSuba" in front of the English title just looks dumb to me.

I can understand and speak in Japanese but I can't read or write Japanese.. I can only understand written Japanese if it's in romaji..

Also romaji have been used lots of times in mystery anime to solve puzzles and dying messages..
I figured it out before kindaichi in one instance because kindaichi was interpretating in Kanji and then katakana but I saw the key to the puzzle was romaji

Ehhh, if you mean senshi as in 戦士 that does not even mean guardian, that's more like warrior (I looked up the wiki and apparently even in the wiki they say sailor soldier at the beginning, but later in the article they change it to sailor guardian. I don't really know what's up with that). I think this is a perfect example of what I am going to talk about, imperfect translation. Even though guardian and warrior are somewhat related, its a big image difference isn't it? A guardian is someone who's role is to protect, a warrior might also fight for their own reasons.

Here's my 2 cents. Romaji is a compromise for when you want to refer to a Japanese concept but the audience cannot read Japanese. For example, if a character wears Geta what am I supposed to say other than Geta? Am I supposed to say "wooden sandals" cause that's close enough, or whatever the englishization of geta is (not sure if there is one). I myself strongly dislike this kind of bastardization. Its a Japanese type of footwear called Geta, it doesn't need another word. By calling it by its original name you are paying respects to the original.

Ok but what about generic words like senshi and seiyuu? These I am a bit more on the fence about. To me the main reason to use romaji is to preserve the uniqueness and the precise meaning of the original, or in the case where there is no equivalent word in english, so it makes no sense to say "in episode X character Y is seen drinking mizu", water is water, it's pretentious and dumb to use a Japanese word for it. Conversely it makes all the sense in the world to distinguish between katana and a sword (even though it is literally a Japanese type of sword). I personally disagree with your translation of isekai as another world, because even though that's what it literally means, at this point isekai is a recognizable term with a specific meaning, another world is just a generic literal translation. I am even more opposed to your translation of song titles because once again, even if you mean well, you are replacing something recognizable with a generic literal translation. Like for example, if I told you I read a book called "A really long journey" do you know what I'm talking about? No? I just translated odyssey ( as in homers odyssey) into English. But Odyssey is already an English word? It is a loan word, but the original word is Greek, so what gives? Is the fact that its been englishized from Odysia to odyssey enough to make it ok then?

I hope you can see that at the very least, its not a problem that is so clear cut that you can say your approach is objectively correct. Whatever you choose there are upsides and downsides. If you translate you make the words legible for an English audience but you risk losing the nuances of the original. If you don't translate you honor the original but many people will not be able to understand the meaning.

For me, as a learner of Japanese, I would happily write all these words that don't have English equivalents in Japanese, but if I did that 90% of the people reading won't be able to understand what I am talking about, so I use romaji. In general I will always avoid the English/localized names because they do not necessarily reflect the original, the original work is Japanese, nothing will ever change that, and I see it fit to pay respect to the original, not the version big corpos made so that the masses can enjoy it.

I don't have an issue with Romaji that people use naturally, like "Isekai", "Anime" or various vocabulary people habe picked up while listening to Japanese. We use loan words from other languages all the time. The Japanese do it too and butcher our words with their Katakana (another loan word).

What I don't accept is using Romaji in translations where you could reasonably replace it with proper English words. I don't like if anime or song titles are just written out in Romaji either. (If it's already too established I still use it to avoid confusion, even though I don't like it.)
Treating Japanese like something you can't translate makes everything lose meaning.

Ehhh, if you mean senshi as in 戦士 that does not even mean guardian, that's more like warrior (I looked up the wiki and apparently even in the wiki they say sailor soldier at the beginning, but later in the article they change it to sailor guardian. I don't really know what's up with that). I think this is a perfect example of what I am going to talk about, imperfect translation. Even though guardian and warrior are somewhat related, its a big image difference isn't it? A guardian is someone who's role is to protect, a warrior might also fight for their own reasons.

Here's my 2 cents. Romaji is a compromise for when you want to refer to a Japanese concept but the audience cannot read Japanese. For example, if a character wears Geta what am I supposed to say other than Geta? Am I supposed to say "wooden sandals" cause that's close enough, or whatever the englishization of geta is (not sure if there is one). I myself strongly dislike this kind of bastardization. Its a Japanese type of footwear called Geta, it doesn't need another word. By calling it by its original name you are paying respects to the original.

Ok but what about generic words like senshi and seiyuu? These I am a bit more on the fence about. To me the main reason to use romaji is to preserve the uniqueness and the precise meaning of the original, or in the case where there is no equivalent word in english, so it makes no sense to say "in episode X character Y is seen drinking mizu", water is water, it's pretentious and dumb to use a Japanese word for it. Conversely it makes all the sense in the world to distinguish between katana and a sword (even though it is literally a Japanese type of sword). I personally disagree with your translation of isekai as another world, because even though that's what it literally means, at this point isekai is a recognizable term with a specific meaning, another world is just a generic literal translation. I am even more opposed to your translation of song titles because once again, even if you mean well, you are replacing something recognizable with a generic literal translation. Like for example, if I told you I read a book called "A really long journey" do you know what I'm talking about? No? I just translated odyssey ( as in homers odyssey) into English. But Odyssey is already an English word? It is a loan word, but the original word is Greek, so what gives? Is the fact that its been englishized from Odysia to odyssey enough to make it ok then?

I hope you can see that at the very least, its not a problem that is so clear cut that you can say your approach is objectively correct. Whatever you choose there are upsides and downsides. If you translate you make the words legible for an English audience but you risk losing the nuances of the original. If you don't translate you honor the original but many people will not be able to understand the meaning.

For me, as a learner of Japanese, I would happily write all these words that don't have English equivalents in Japanese, but if I did that 90% of the people reading won't be able to understand what I am talking about, so I use romaji. In general I will always avoid the English/localized names because they do not necessarily reflect the original, the original work is Japanese, nothing will ever change that, and I see it fit to pay respect to the original, not the version big corpos made so that the masses can enjoy it.

Romaji has it's practical uses. As an example been currently living in north America for quite awhile and I don't have a Japanese QWERTY keyboard. So communicating with people in Japan who are not well-versed specifically with English but are familiar enough with the roman alphabet when a program isn't present to convert Romaji into a kana conversion or vise versa, it makes things a lot easier. Specifically because I am not very literate with hiragana and katakana but understand the language spoken. Without Romaji it would have made communicating with some Japanese relatives extremely hard through email or even texting.

The sailor moon example is dumb I agree. I think it's part of the anti-localization obsession some weebs have which leaves texts half-untranslated because of
>muh you can't render that accurately in English because there's some deep culture behind it
crap they like to pull as if the common word for "warrior" (that's what senshi 戦士 actually means) is somehow untranslatable.
I can get behind the "isekai" thing because it has become part if anime jargon and is mostly used to refer to something very specific. Yes it's sometimes used for stuff like Dunbine but when most people say "isekai" they mean "boring loser transported to generic jrpg world with game mechanics and (optional) becomes OP by grinding"
The seiyu thing I can't get behind. The english word exists, describes the same thing and is even made up of the same words.
In any case I don't think that's the fault of transliteration (what romaji is). Transliteration has existed as long as written language has existed and we won't get rid of it because weebs are doing weeb things.

@Theo1899 Everything is going according to the keikaku!

Isekai makes sense, it's such a stupid extremely anime specific genre that you cannot find anywhere else, unless you insist on retroactively using that word on stuff that really doesn't have anything to do with the genre, just because it has going to another world, even though going to another world is totally not even important in a genre literally named "other world"...

MAL uses "villainess" as a manga tag when "manga with a female villain" is not the intended meaning.

@FanofAction Nisekoi is also a funny case since its sometimes titled as "Nisekoi: False Love" when "Nisekoi" literally means false love, so it's technically being called False Love: False Love. I know for sure nobody will ever call it False Love. Also, I tried typing False Love in the search bar on MyAnimeList, and the first search result actually is the first season of the anime.

1st off not all American QWERTY keyboard can convert Romaji to Kana. Though, just to be clear I have severe carpal tunnel and these days need to use ergonomic keyboards. I have not been able to find a QWERTY keyboard that fits my current physical needs so it's easier to just stick with the ergonomic keyboard I have been using for almost a half a decade now. Plus I was just speaking generally because often times I will be using my phone to email or text too and don't want to go through the hassle of needing to mess with my phone settings only for the need to communicate non-verbally to only two relatives in Japan which isn't like everyday or anything. Plus my relatives aren't very savvy with technology.

That does make a difference in my opinion.

@Lucifrost To me it seems like a very flimsy excuse. With Greek loanwords the words are often changed subtly to make them easier to say (or possibly, more in line with the English phonetic profile) for example,

Aristotle = Aristotelis
Plato = Platonas
Pegasus = Pigasos

Pegasus only has a 2 vowel difference, and tbh, its unclear what vowel would be correct anyway because the vowels between greek and English are not 1 to 1, well o is pretty 1 to 1 at least so I guess that one is different. Some words like gyros have no difference at all, so would those words be not ok somehow? It just feels very arbitrary.

Clearly, at some point in time a decision was made to import Greek vocabulary into English, and sure, the words were slightly altered in some cases but an effort was clearly made to preserve the greek etymology as well, for example seen in the word "Olympics", whenever you see a "y" in a Greek loanword it usually (always?) implies that the corresponding Greek vowel is ipsilon ( υ Υ ), I guess because it kinda looks like the capitalized form of ipsilon and can also be prounounced similarly. Importantly, nobody was explaining Greek concepts by haphazard literal translation, if that were the case the opthalmologist would be called something like "He who reasons about eyeballs".

1st off not all American QWERTY keyboard can convert Romaji to Kana. Though, just to be clear I have severe carpal tunnel and these days need to use ergonomic keyboards. I have not been able to find a QWERTY keyboard that fits my current physical needs so it's easier to just stick with the ergonomic keyboard I have been using for almost a half a decade now. Plus I was just speaking generally because often times I will be using my phone to email or text too and don't want to go through the hassle of needing to mess with my phone settings only for the need to communicate non-verbally to only two relatives in Japan which isn't like everyday or anything. Plus my relatives aren't very savvy with technology.

I often hear them called "eye doctors."

@Lucifrost I'm fairly confident that is not what their degree says though XD

all major operating systems, including windows, linux, mac, iOS and android, have an option to type in romaji and the system automatically converts it to kana/kanji. not that this would matter if you can't read nor understand written Japanese anyway.

@Anjuro
Is that so? I'd rather a degree describe me as "he who reasons about eyeballs." It sounds cooler but is less practical for casual conversation.

@Lucifrost To me it seems like a very flimsy excuse. With Greek loanwords the words are often changed subtly to make them easier to say (or possibly, more in line with the English phonetic profile) for example,

Aristotle = Aristotelis
Plato = Platonas
Pegasus = Pigasos

Pegasus only has a 2 vowel difference, and tbh, its unclear what vowel would be correct anyway because the vowels between greek and English are not 1 to 1, well o is pretty 1 to 1 at least so I guess that one is different. Some words like gyros have no difference at all, so would those words be not ok somehow? It just feels very arbitrary.

Clearly, at some point in time a decision was made to import Greek vocabulary into English, and sure, the words were slightly altered in some cases but an effort was clearly made to preserve the greek etymology as well, for example seen in the word "Olympics", whenever you see a "y" in a Greek loanword it usually (always?) implies that the corresponding Greek vowel is ipsilon ( υ Υ ), I guess because it kinda looks like the capitalized form of ipsilon and can also be prounounced similarly. Importantly, nobody was explaining Greek concepts by haphazard literal translation, if that were the case the opthalmologist would be called something like "He who reasons about eyeballs".

Well there are some exceptions. People understands demon slayer but not Kimetsu no Yaiba. But then ppl say Jujutsu Kaisen not Sorcerer fight. You see, sometimes romaji works better than english translation and vice versa.

Not really arbitary. Greek vocabulary entered the English language in different stages and from different and each one follows different conventions but they are (for the most part) consistent.
Plato came from Latin where 3rd declension nouns (Greek -ων nouns and many more) end in a long ō. Modern Greek Platonas came after the 3rd declension collapsed and was assimilated into the other two.
Aristotle came from Latin through French hence the weird ending.
Pegasus came from Latin where the 2nd declension ends in -us. The e came from the ancient pronounciation of Greek H which was a long ē when the Romans encountered the word.
Gyros being a more recent word came directly from Greek hence the -os ending.

Kinda unrelated to tbe thread topic I just wanted to make clear why Greek words in English seem so inconsistent.