Light or Wrong?

Mandi Paugh once more blesses us with a brand-spanking new Mega Musing, this time regarding the bizarre naming confusion surrounding one Mr. Eugene Chaud/Chaud Blaze/Enzan Ijuuin.

Incidently, I was of the thought that “Eugene” was picked as it seemed closer to “Ijuuin” than to “Enzan,” at least if I had to guess phonetics. Plus, the simple fact that “Chaud” and “Enzan” are how the characters are referred to in their respective locations.

Anyway, interesting little piece, though it sort of lacks the depth I was hoping for.

By which I mean, she gets off to a good start, referring to Dr. Light/Wright/Right, but then it becomes all about Chaud. Let’s face it, there are numerous examples of name inconsistencies in the entirety of Mega Man.

For starters, the very name of the series itself. For as long as I’ve been online, I’ve seen “Mega Man,” “Megaman,” and “MegaMan.” This applies in licensed areas, too, and follows with the various other personalities which fill the games.

Consider this. My understanding is that the first Rockman was almost identical to the first Mega Man, except that the title screen was changed, and any instance of “Rockman” was replaced by “Mega Man.”
In theory, for such a direct conversion, it stands to reason that it ought to be “Megaman” to match “Rockman,” but the original logo stands to defy this by having a line break so that the name is read as two words. Following this, the first game’s stage select also has all the other robots named as one word, following the more common trends in superhero naming such as “Superman” or “Batman”(at least “Mega Man” has never been hyphenated as “Spider-man” is).

Of course, that changed with Mega Man 2, when the stage select there implemented line breaks as well.

Then there are more recent titles, such as Legends and Battle Network, which use “MegaMan,” the latter of which also applying the same scheme to other Navis such as “ProtoMan.” Of course, the fact that as we recently found out of different localization teams handling different Mega Man series no doubt plays some part in this as well.
So yeah, basically, anything with a “Man” in the name is a bitch to figure out the “proper” way of spelling, even though it’s been said that Capcom approves pretty much ANY which way.

But, it doesn’t stop there. As noted initially, Dr. Right initially was Dr. Wright in the US before they settled on Dr. Light. Then there’s the more recent mess of Wily vs. Wiley. Boomer Kuwanger becoming Boomerang Kuwanger.

Oh, and don’t forget the mild uproar that came when Mega Man Powered Up accidently renamed “Rock” into “Mega,” minus the “Man” on either.

Battle Network ran into an interesting dillema as well. In the original series, “Gospel” became “Treble” with “Forte” becoming “Bass” to match with it. Truth be told, that was probably one of the better jobs they’d done in localization, sticking with the musical theme and all.

Until Japan decided to revive Gospel in the BN series as a NetMafia organization, and giving them a big, stylized letter “G” to match. So then we find outselves with the oddly named combination of Bass and Gospel. Of course, this no doubt goes back in some degree to the Battle Network localizers, who since Legends(barring the whole “origin of MegaMan’s name” issue) have essentially become Capcom’s slackers. I admit, “NetMafia Gospel” is just a little catchier than “NetMafia Treble,” but that just goes back to showing how rough any form of consistency here can be, as well as the differences in approach between the different Capcom localization teams(how easy would it have been to leave Dr. Right’s “R” logo in “Mega Man Powered Up” without any explanation?).
…and that’s without even TOUCHING NT Warrior, or the recent change in Battle Network 6 of AquaMan to SpoutMan(SpoutMan for the win, btw).

Sadly, I doubt any of this will change in the near future. What Capcom needs is to get someone to essentially create a series bible for the various localization and licensees to go by when making Mega Man product. Until that happens, I don’t think we’ll see much widespread improvement. And sadly, even though some of us know that it’s different people doing different things, it all reflects back on Capcom as a whole in the end.
LBD “Nytetrayn”

David Oxford

David Oxford, or “LBD ‘Nytetrayn’,” as he is sometimes also known, is a freelance writer of many varied interests who resides in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. If you’re interested in hiring him, please drop him a line at david.oxford (at) nyteworks.net.

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