I've been curious about the name of the Kamidake, a ship which figures pretty highly in the middle section of Tenchi Muyo: GXP. Is that the "kami" we all know and love that means "god"? Does the name really mean anything at all?

Without seeing it written in Japanese, there's no hope of figuring that out. But today I noticed that the title of ep 12 is translated as "Kamidake seriously damaged":

So, ta-da! Here it is: 守蛇怪大破 kamidake taiha

大破 Taiha means "serious damage". The rest of it, 守蛇怪, is the ship name, and no, 神 kami meaning "god" isn't part of it.

守 kami means "guard, protect, defend, obey"

蛇 da means "snake"

怪 ke means "suspicious, mystery, apparition"

The Kamidake is a "decoy ship", a purpose-built warship which is designed to look like a cargo carrier. Its mission is to go out and wander around in hopes of enticing pirate attack. That's because it's much armed and defended than pirate ships are, and in a fight even against a group of them it has every expectation of winning.

So its mission is fundamentally sneaky. I wonder if that's the implication of the name? "Mysterious snake who protects." Maybe.

Or maybe they created it the way they create a lot of names, by stringing together obscure readings of relatively obscure kanji used phonetically just to be confusing.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in at 06:08 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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