Ichigo Mashimaro: Coppola?
Ichigo Mashimaro makes me feel so guilty. But anyway, I started watching the anime and it’s better than I thought. The seiyuu were all very good, although I think there are more suitable candidates for Nobue and Ana, which is not to say that I don’t like Hitomi Nabatame and Mamiko Noto (Yakumo FTW!). Also, it kind of annoys me how they changed Nobue from a 16-year-old high school girl to a 20-year-old college student. Her being a chain smoker just doesn’t seem as funny now that she’s legal.
「まい ねいむ いず あな」
But more importantly, something has been bothering me since forever. What exactly is the joke with Ana’s last name? The manga didn’t explain it, so I assume that it must be something really obvious to a Japanese. I tried searching dictionaries and googling for “コッポラ”, but I can’t find any possible explanations. The Japanese Wikipedia entry isn’t very helpful either. In the anime, Miu-chan gives Ana the nickname “穴骨洞” (anakoppora) and the English Wikipedia entry took that to be the joke, but it can’t be because it’s not in the manga! Also, “穴骨洞” (formed out of the kanji for “hole”, “bones” and “cave”) is not a real word, so it’s not something that everyone would immediately associate with her name, which means that it makes no sense for the girls (excluding Miu) to react weirdly when they hear it.
Therefore, there must be some other reason why the name “Coppola” is humourous in Japanese. Something that is immediately obvious to any Japanese, such that the manga does not need to explicitly explain the joke. Someone suggested to me that maybe it sounds like koppura, which is short for cup ramen. That’s the most likely explanation I’ve heard so far, but then again, “Coppola” is written as koppora and not koppura.
My other theory is that it’s either a slant for swearing or a sexual reference. This would explain why the anime handled the joke quite differently from the manga (just look at what censorship did to Nobue). In that case, it’s still weird that WWWJDIC doesn’t have the word, since it contains quite a lot of informal entries.
This question is driving me nuts! Just what the hell is so funny about Ana’s last name!?
November 21st, 2005 at 10:37 pm
Isn’t it because a famous director is also named Coppola, as in Francis Ford Coppola?
November 21st, 2005 at 10:55 pm
No, because in the manga when Nobue was comforting Ana, she said something like “It’s not a bad name, even famous directors use it.”
November 21st, 2005 at 11:49 pm
I thought the joke was that names are usually composed of words which are pleasing in their content, like how one would write ‘Fuka’ would be ‘wind’ and ‘scent’. Having a girl with a name which is written as ‘small bone cave’ or ‘hole bone cave’ would be an insult, at least when written. I don’t know if this is what the kids in the other school would have teased her about – perhaps it was the fact she was a foreigner in appearance (blue-eyed blonds being almost the complete opposite of the ‘typical’ Japanese) and had a name which could be mispronounced as ‘ramen’… or one which they couldn’t pronounce easily, period.
November 22nd, 2005 at 12:11 am
The point is that in the original work, there is no joke about her name being written as ‘hole bone cave’ (by Miu-chan), which means that there is something else that is funny about her name pronounced in Japanese.
I am trying to figure out what that joke is supposed to be and the cup ramen thing is just a theory.
November 22nd, 2005 at 6:02 am
According to a sub that I have by a random group of guys (rabidkimba & Chikushou) Coppola means ‘bone head’. These guys were the original guys who started translating the show before actual groups started to pick it up. They had no OP/ED karaoke or anything.
November 22nd, 2005 at 4:34 pm
Nobue is still 16 years old. It was suppose to be a japanese censorship joke when she tells the viewer that she’s actually 20 years old. And why would a college student wear a high school uniform.
November 30th, 2005 at 11:14 pm
Coppola is also the name of the screenplay writer for “Lost in Translation” – Sophia Coppola. I don’t know if this is related or not but the movie has brought brought debates about it being a racist film against the Japanese or a humorous one about 2 foreigners being lost in Japan. Could be unrelated… but yeah it’d be funny if it really did mean bone head, Sophia “Bone Head” who wrote “Lost in Translation.”
December 1st, 2005 at 11:21 am
Is it possible that the word “Coppola” is how the Japanese translate the English word “Coppulate”?
February 26th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
there’s a guy, called “Nicholas Kim Coppola”.. his more popular name is “Nicholas Cage”.. how about this one?
February 26th, 2006 at 6:52 pm
oh.. and right now, i see he’s the son of Francis Ford Coppola lol ^^
February 26th, 2006 at 6:55 pm
if you look there http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppola
February 26th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
you can find out more about the coppola-family.. they are all the same family.. and you can see WAY more on the german page: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Cage
May 17th, 2006 at 5:45 am
It’s because the Japanese phoenetics in her last name roughly translate to bonehead. -_-
January 19th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
ha ha! bone head ana i get it now ^_^ phew! this show is too sweet everything else seems… well no thats not true but they are damn cute my 2 fave are miu & matsuri ha im just hentai dreaming now (^_^;;
April 22nd, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Kappore was a joke show in the Japanese feudal age. Coppola has a similar pronunciation to Kappore (especially in japanese’sound). now almost Japanese don’t know the meaning of Kappore, but we feel funny when we listen the word like kappore.
December 1st, 2007 at 12:55 am
ok, this is abit late, considering when u posted this, lol.
anyway, for me, who’ve only watched the anime and OVA, the name coppola is just a name anna hates. well, we do know that the girls are all young and thus not very exposed to english names, ‘cept for nobue. in the anime, when the girls heard the name, they just said that it was weird, so basically it just sounds weird to them. and that anna is more jap-inclined than brit, thus that may in a way result in her finding her own name sounding weird according to japs’ tastes?
the joke at the end of the day? miu likes to call anna by the name which she hates, and anna looks cute angry, while miu looks great face-down on the floor, haha.
December 3rd, 2008 at 2:29 pm
The reason why koppora sounds weird to the Japanese has something to do with the accents of the 19th century peasants in northeastern Japan.
They used to pronounce “kon-na koto” as “koddara godo”, “chotto” as “chokkura”, “bikkuri” as “beggura” and so on, which is not considered very elegant among the white-collar class.
And, the family name Coppola doesn’t sound like British but reminds us of Italian immigrants, which further highlights the awkwardness of Ana’s phony “British Style.”
That’s probably why Miu always mentions “koppora” whenever Ana gets a bout of British chauvinism (as in drama CD’s) or her facade is wearing off.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Actually its quite simple. They made it known when the name was spelled out on paper by Miu. It was a literal translation in Kanji that spelled out bone cave. So that’s why she didn’t like it. Who wants to be called hole bone cave. Its an odd name and their reactions were from that as well as ana’s dislike of her own name.
November 7th, 2009 at 11:08 am
8
Parrot
December 1st, 2005 at 11:21 am
Is it possible that the word “Coppola” is how the Japanese translate the English word “Coppulate”?
^
I like this idea best ♥
November 26th, 2010 at 7:02 am
i don’t think it’s slang, swearing or a sexual reference because even matsuri got the joke. it might somehow translate to “bone head” like people in the comments said because the first thing the girls said about her name was that it was very uncool. but later on, when Miu called her by her last name in front of the whole class, she tried covering up the mistake by saying it was only a nickname followed by saying “it’s no good as a nickname either”, so if Coppola means bone head it doesn’t make sense that it’s no good as a nickname, because it’s not especially weird for somone to be nicknamed bone head.