Thread: 3.2 Patch Notes

Originally Posted by Chessala

Also, something being very popular and being a niche kind of does not go together.

Something that's niche in popularity has a narrow band of popularity—it is popular with a certain subset of the general population such that it is not generally considered mainstream. For example, Dungeons and Dragons is certainly popular (the tabletop RPG industry has undergone something of a renaissance in the past 10 years or so), but its appeal is to a niche audience—whereas something like video games in general have popular, mainstream appeal.

Regarding Mononoke, that example was given only to show that, at one time, anime had enough crossover appeal with the general population that some movies could get national theatrical releases. It's not popular enough with the general population now for something like that to really occur. Theatrical releases these days are usually limited, in select cities and such.

All I'm saying is that its mainstream appeal has gotten smaller over the past couple of decades in the States. That's primarily because the licensing scenes have begun to focus on a smaller range of shows that appeal to a more dedicated fanbase that is, relative to the overall population, less general and more niche in its tastes.

I never actually even said I disliked the term senpai (I think it can be used for great comedic effect sometimes)—just that there's some number of players who wouldn't recognize the word. Even among anime fans (of which this game assuredly has many), it's not even guaranteed that someone watches enough anime (or even the right types of shows, since the "notice me senpai" bit is a genre thing for the most part) with Japanese audio to really be familiar with the word—especially since so much of anime is consumed via streaming on Netflix and Hulu which don't always have subtitle options. Crunchyroll certainly does—but folks watching anime on Crunchyroll are certainly more dedicated fans who would know what the word meant.

As is usual in these cases, the NA localization team took a more general approach—the reference is there for the in crowd who get/approve of the allusion, and folks who don't recognize it aren't really affected because the name of the achievement makes enough sense in context.