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Aspiring pirate kings share hugs with each other and a bit of Japanese culture with the world<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Considering how anime and manga were still pretty much a niche hobby in most parts of the world when One Piece<\/strong> got started back in 1997, it\u2019s amazing to see how huge of a global fanbase the franchise has today. Not only are there people around the world keeping up with the epically lengthy series\u2019 new manga chapters and anime episodes, Netflix\u2019s<\/strong> Western-made live-action adaptation has defied the odds and become a hit too, with its second season set to start streaming on March 10.<\/p>\n And as even further proof of just how big the One Piece<\/em> fan community has grown, even Sesame Street\u2019s Elmo<\/strong> is looking forward to Season 2, appearing in a promotional video with Luffy\u2019s live-action actor, I\u00f1aki Godoy<\/strong>, in which he teaches the Muppet a useful Japanese vocabulary word<\/strong>.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cElmo\u2019s all ready to join the Straw Hats,\u201d<\/strong> he enthusiastically tells I\u00f1aki, then declares \u201cElmo\u2019s going to be king of the pirates!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u00f1aki is clearly impressed not just by Elmo\u2019s enthusiasm, but also by the Mupet\u2019s Luffy cosplay outfit. Still, it takes more than just a cool look and sense of adventure to really be part of the Straw Hat crew. \u201cThat\u2019s why I want to teach you a special new word of the day,\u201d<\/strong> I\u00f1aki explains. \u201cIt\u2019s actually a word that my dear friend Luffy taught me. The word is nakama<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n Though it\u2019s a Japanese word, nakama is a term near and dear to the hearts of overseas One Piece<\/em> fans, as it\u2019s often left untranslated in fan translations and discussions about the series. \u201cNakama is a Japanese word to describe very special friends,\u201d I\u00f1aki tells Elmo. \u201cFriends who are like family. They care about each other, help each other, and stick together no matter what.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s actually a pretty good description. If you want to get into the nitty-gritty linguistics, nakama is usually used to refer to someone with whom you share a common purpose or goal that you\u2019re trying to achieve, often by working together<\/strong>. In that sense, nakama has similarities to terms such as \u201ccomrade,\u201d \u201cpartner,\u201d or \u201ccohort,\u201d but with a warmer, less formal feeling. It can also sometime be extended to refer to someone with whom you have a strong in-spirit partnership, even if you\u2019re not directly collaborating with each other, as long as your values and ideals largely align and you\u2019re both working towards your dreams that stem from them.<\/p>\n \u25bc Nakama is written with the kanji \u4ef2\u9593, with \u4ef2 representing a personal relationship and \u9593 usually meaning some sort of space or interval, but combined like this the characters create a sense of being within the same close mental\/emotional space as someone else.<\/p>\n Pronunciation-wise, I\u00f1aki and Elmo both put a lot more emphasis on the \u201cka\u201d part of nakama than a native Japanese speaker would (the three syllables are meant to be pronounced with roughly equal stress), but their attempts are still easily understandable. Netflix\u2019s onscreen captions go back and forth on whether or not nakama is supposed to be capitalized, but linguistically it shouldn\u2019t be, and while it\u2019s very sweet when I\u00f1aki says \u201cI love you too Elmo! We\u2019re nakamas!\u201d, that should actually be \u201cWe\u2019re nakama,\u201d since, as with most Japanese words, \u201cnakama\u201d is used to refer to both a single special friend or many of them<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u25bc Preview video for the second season of Netflix\u2019s live-action One Piece<\/em><\/p>\n\n Those little linguistic quibbles aside, it\u2019s pretty cool to see One Piece<\/em> being not just a fun adventure story, but also a means by which people, including young kids, can learn a bit about another culture and its language, and now that Elmo has become part of the extended One Piece<\/em> nakama network, he can join us in wondering what\u2019s inside that treasure chest that series creator Eiichiro Oda just tossed into the ocean<\/a>.<\/p>\n Source, top image: Instagram\/netflix<\/a><\/em> Aspiring pirate kings share hugs with each other and a bit of Japanese culture with the world. Considering how anime and manga were still pretty much a niche hobby in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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