The Funniest Movie Title Translations In Japanese

Have you ever looked up some of the titles movies in English are renamed when they’re screened overseas? For example, Thor: Ragnarok was advertised in Japan as Mighty Thor: Battle Royale, presumably both because of unfamiliarity with the word ragnarok and also to cash in on the popularity of Battle Royale, the highest-grossing Japanese-language film at the time of its release.

In the video above, Abroad in Japan summarizes some of the strangest and funniest Japanese translations of movie titles, and we have more selections below, courtesy of Bomb Arrow.

It seems to become especially complicated when a movie has sequels, such as Despicable Me, Despicable Me 2, and Despicable Me 3, which audiences in Japan know as Phantom Thief Gru and the Moon Theft, Phantom Thief Gru and the Minion Crisis, and Phantom Thief Gru and the Minion Great Escape, respectively. But perhaps the best series of sequel titles goes to the Fast & Furious franchise, with titles like these:

  • The Fast & The Furious in Japan is Wild Speed
  • 2 Fast 2 Furious in Japan is Wild Speed X2
  • The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift in Japan is Wild Speed X3: Tokyo Drift
  • Fast & Furious in Japan is Wild Speed MAX
  • Fast Five in Japan is Wild Speed Mega Max
  • Fast & Furious 6 in Japan is Wild Speed Euro Mission
  • Furious 7 in Japan is Wild Speed Sky Mission
  • The Fate of the Furious in Japan is Wild Speed Ice Break

Not all of the translated titles are as creative, though. Many of them took a very literal approach, telling you straight up who the protagonists are, from a first-person perspective:

Some of the titles may be an improvement on the original:

Some only left us with questions:

Some of the titles took a circuitous route to get where they’re going:

Some titles may have simplified things a bit in translation:

Some of them possess disturbing implications:

And some of them get right to the point:

(Via Abroad in Japan and Bomb Arrow)

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