Hey!

So I thought I would use a few of these for the next few months to fill the poll.

This month, I want to use 'Love Rival you wouldn't mind seeing succeed?', except I think I'm confusing Junjou and Sekai-ichi so I want to post the rivals below and whenever you get a chance, add to them or take one out? 

• An Kohinata

• Yanase Yuu

• Haitani Shin

Is this all? Or am I missing someone?

Hey hey!

Takafumi Yokozawa? He was a rival for a while. Those four are the main ones, I think.

Hmm, Kisa has a few guys into him, but I'm not sure they would count as rivals? Otoko and Ichimura.

Yuu's name should be Yuu Yanase, since we're going with Western order.

There's a problem with Haitani's name, which I've been meaning to look deeper into. Haitani is his family name, and his given name is likely pronounced Arata instead of Shin. Japanese fans seem to pronounce it as Arata. I've been meaning to skim through the chapters again to see if his given name is spoken anywhere to catch the furigana and confirm. So maybe just list him as "Haitani" for now? Depending on when you want to put up the poll, I can try to confirm before then.

Hmm, fortunately, the poll is changing on the 6th (I think that's when I created it, I want to leave them up for a month or date-to-date), so I'll see if I can find out how we should be reading his name? 

I sent an email to a team which translates the manga to see if they could tell me how it's read. I couldn't even find the kanji for his name OTL. Hopefully they're able to get back to me on that and we can correct the information. I don't see much for the Japanese fandom honestly, I can't even locate their Wikia page, they may not even have one. 

But I'll give it a day to see if they get back to me, afterwards I'll update the poll to just read 'Haitani', ^^;;

Haitani's given name is pronounced Arata on the Japanese wikipedia page, just for reference. I'm inclined to go with that, but I'm not going to feel completely confident until I actually check the chapters for myself. ^^;

OK the translation team who puts put Sekai-ichi has replied! I'm writing this from my phone so I'm just going to copy paste as best as possible because the wiki looks and behaves like utter shit on my phone. This is a nightmare.

Hi there!

His name is indeed Shin; I don't have my volumes with me at the moment, but the raws always have the furigana beside the kanji, telling you how to read the kanji. So there's no way we would have made as huge a mistake as reading しん as あらた lol! The Japanese raws leave no room for interpretation in that instance, so it's definitely Haitani SHIN and not ARATA.

Hope that helps! Hide quoted text

So I'm not sure why the Japanese fandom is referring to him as Arata, but that isnt his name.

I'm glad we've heard back, but their reply actually doesn't address the problem. When names are spoken in the manga, they are always shown with furigana, that's true. But I can't find any instance when Haitani's given name is spoken. From what I've checked, we've only seen his name as either printed on the business card that he hands to Ritsu when the first meet, and his name on Ritsu's phone when he calls later. Neither of these frames provide furigana, so we don't have the pronunciation from them.

I remain unconvinced until we have an official source. I'm also inclined to think that native Japanese speakers would have a better idea how to pronounce his name, possibly from supplementary material (such as ads or interviews at cons) that we just haven't seen/heard in English.

I understand your view, but until we get a better source like the con or event items scanned, let's assume it's Shin, we can always go back and correct it later on. I'm at work right now though, so when I get home I'll check around a bit more. It would be easier if the Japanese fandom had a wiki as well... but things are only fun if they take time!

The summary on the back cover of volume 8 shows his name is Arata! Glad to have that settled. x__x

So where did Shin come from then? I've never looked at the raws, just the basic reading of the kanji?

Yeah, it's just a basic reading of the kanji. Haitani's name is shown on his business card when he's introduced, which doesn't have furigana with it, so the translator probably did a best guess at the time.