Long gap, but I had to start up again to share the joy of puns…

 I’m in a Discord community and several of the members on there know Japanese to one degree or another.  One of the members is nearly fluent (A), one of them acts as though she is (B) and I’m not sure about the level of various other members (C).  I do know, however, that I am a long, long, way from fluent….  Recently B schooled A on a pun/slang meaning to everyone’s shock and surprise.  It was fun & we all learned something from it. 

But I recently started watching BNA which allegedly stands for “Brand New Animal”, although I am of the opinion, given the show’s nature and the title sequence with repeating cgcgc (base pairs in DNA/RNA for making up gene sequences), that it could equally well stand for Beast-DNA.

7 minutes into the first episode, including the titles, we have the pun that I’m going to get to, but I need to lay a little groundwork first.

We see a small raccoon-humanoid girl looking scared and trying to use an ATM, but having to hide from human thugs who vandalize a poster speaking about tolerance between humans and beastkind and “Anima City”.  Later, she is attacked by a human gang of bigots as she tries to get to Anima City, and would have been killed, but she is rescued by a group of beastkind, out of the goodness of their hearts - who then charge her everything she has for the privilege - and take her to Anima City.  The boat that they have is named this…



It’s so good that I have shared it with several of my friends that know Japanese.  I shared it in the discord group and said this:

Unrelated, but the joy of puns… 😍 it’s a boat early in BNA …  

This one has *layers* 😍🤩😍💜

 B replied “I can see the reading but I don't see the pun? XD Probably I lack the context of the anime lol” * 

I don’t see how B can’t see the level 1 pun at least, but before I got back there, one of group C answered… their response is decidedly lacking… (because it ignores the middle kanji of the boat name completely…).

The first pun is just that 丸 is a common suffix for boat names and the name could be translated as boat in Africa(I think? Maybe just Boat A), the reading is animal., The show's name is Brand New Animal. All of the characters I've seen from the show are anthropomorphized animals. I'm guessing the layers come from context.

So, of course, I replied with this… here are all the layers and all things I love about this pun in my reply to them.  It’s just so amazing.

The first one in this case is probably “prefix to names to show intimacy “ rather than Africa or Awa. The third as already mentioned is the boat naming suffix (but also horses, dogs etc - so domesticated beasts, beasts that are close to humans, so that gets an extra layer already on the suffix).

The second kanji is:

“noun

ⓐ  benevolence (esp. as a virtue of Confucianism), consideration, compassion, humanity, charity

ⓑ  human

ⓒ  kernel

biology term

ⓓ  nucleolus (see also: 核小体)”

So we have a simple single layer pun of the boat’s name that belongs to beastmen and is rescuing a beastman sounds like the loan word animal (animaru).

But given the given the mistreatment/outright violence and bigotry of many humans against beastmen, you get a social commentary in that second kanji that is multilayered about humans lacking humanity…

… and then since Mink then charged raccoon everything she had for the rescue, an irony/pun in the naming of benevolence… 

And then you get the science geek pun at the very end which is ludicrously esoteric because DNA/beast DNA is already or is going to be a huge plot point (as you can tell from the very first titles with the cgcgcg repeating in the background) - a nucleolus is a really important structure in a cell’s nucleus that makes the factories that make DNA/RNA.

This pun that was only onscreen for a second or so has so so so many layers”

So, I just wanted to share the ludicrously awesome pun with anyone that might appreciate it!




* It’s not being able to see layer 1 of the pun, the really simple, obvious, beginning Japanese, level of the pun that makes me say that she acts as though she is fluent.  But, I may be being overly harsh, she just not have a brain that likes/sees puns easily.  Mine doesn’t stop…


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