Both of these Cronic figures are melting menaces, but they're not smog monsters. These fellows rose up from the grime, not air pollution. How do we know? The secret's in their names.Both have names based on "doro," the Japanese word for "mud".
The fellow on the left, Dorome, has a name based on the words "doro" (mud) + "me" (eye). Call him Mud Eye.
The fellow on the right, Dorogami, is based on "doro" (mud) and "gami" (god). So, he's the Mud God.
So far, so good. The Romaji of the two characters ("Dorome" and "Dorogami") is an exact match. The same goes for the Katakana ("ドロメ" and "ドロガミ").
The Kanji, however, is a bit trickier. Koiwa-san enjoys plays on words, so the characters he choses for his monsters' names sometimes have the same sounds but different meanings. Dorome is "怒魯眼" and Dorogami is "怒鷺我魅". Dorome does preserve the traditional character for "eye" (眼) at the end of his name. And, the second character in his name has a radical related to fish.
Koiwa-san certainly enjoys working with classical kanji (characters). Check out the "chop" on the bottom of Dorogami!
(thanks to my good buddy for the Japanese lesson over beer and sours. ;-)
Very interesting re: the hidden meanings. I had no idea about the stamp at the bottom of the Dorogami.
ReplyDeleteAttention to detail- I love it!
Yeah I'm really interested in the origins of the monsters and names. The super interesting stuff lies in the characters (kanji) Koiwa-san chooses.
ReplyDeleteAccording to my girlfriend, some of them are very classical. We spent some time decyphering the characters in "Dorome" and "Dorogami" and were able to figure most of them out. Also, read aloud in Japanese, they do (we're pretty sure) read out as "Dorome" and "Dorogami" but the meaning (with the exception of the final character of "Dorome") is far removed from the original sounds that the names are based on. Hope that makes a little sense!
I love that Dorome fig. I've never seen the sculpt before. Has Cronic stopped producing it?
ReplyDeleteIt's Cronic's newest figure. I think we can look forward to seeing plenty of versions in the future.
ReplyDelete