Maji, Yabai, Oshi: The Youth Slang Anime Characters Use

The English release of Oshi no Ko never translated its own title. Not because nobody tried — because there's no English word that does the job.

Oshi is the person you back. The idol you'd defend in an argument, whose merch you buy, whose name you'd write on a fan. "Favourite" is too mild; "bias", borrowed from K-pop fandom, is close but not quite. So the title stayed Japanese, and a word that started as fan slang ended up on posters around the world.

Yesterday we looked at rough everyday words like yani and zeni — words that tell you where a character comes from. Youth slang does the same job along a different line: it tells you how old a character is, and how much of their life happens online.

One honest caveat first. Anime scripts tend to avoid the very latest slang, because it dates within a couple of years and makes a show feel old. The words that actually turn up in dialogue are the ones that have stuck around. That's what this list is.

Shortcuts

**りょ ryo — "k"** Ryōkai ("understood") cut down to its first syllable. It's a text-message word — you see it on a character's phone screen far more often than you hear it said aloud.

**おつ otsu — "thanks for your hard work"** Short for otsukaresama, the phrase Japanese people say at the end of any shared effort. Otsu is the chat-room version. Online it's often written 乙, a character that happens to be read otsu.

**あざす azasu — "thx"** Arigatō gozaimasu, with most of the syllables worn off. It has a sporty, younger-guy feel — the kind of thanks a first-year gives a senior in a school club. (More on that relationship: senpai and kōhai.)

**よろ *yoro*** Yoroshiku — the untranslatable "please treat me well / I'm counting on you" — reduced to two syllables. Casual to the point of cheeky.

**あけおめ akeome — "HNY"** Akemashite omedetō, "Happy New Year", compressed. Usually followed by kotoyoro — kotoshi mo yoroshiku, "let's get on well this year too". You'll see both in any New Year's episode's group chat.

The ones that stuck

**マジ maji — "seriously"** From majime, "serious". It's been around far longer than most people guess, which is why it no longer sounds young so much as casual. "Maji de?" — "For real?"

**ヤバい yabai The most useful word on this list, and the most confusing. It originally meant dangerous or bad** — "the police are coming, this is yabai". Over the last few decades it has also come to mean amazing. A character tasting something and saying yabai is almost certainly impressed. Context and tone are the only way to tell which yabai you're getting.

**ガチ gachi — "for real, no joke"** From gachinko, a sumo word for a genuine, full-strength bout. Now it means "seriously" or "hardcore": a gachi fan isn't a casual one.

**ウザい uzai — "annoying"** From uzattai. Sharp and dismissive — said about a person, it's a real put-down.

**キモい kimoi — "gross"** Kimochi warui ("feels bad", "creepy") compressed. Harsher than it sounds in translation; being called kimoi at school hurts.

**ってか tteka — "I mean", "anyway"** From to iu ka, "or rather". Used to change the subject or correct yourself mid-sentence. Characters who start sentences with tteka sound young and a little restless.

**それな sore na — "right?!", "exactly"** Literally just "that, yeah". Full agreement in two syllables.

Born online

**推し *oshi*** From osu, "to push" or "to recommend". It grew out of idol fandom, where each fan backs a particular member, and has spread to anything: your oshi character, your oshi VTuber, your oshi café. Oshi-katsu is the activity of supporting them.

**草 kusa — "lol" Literally grass**. Japanese internet laughter is w, short for warai ("laugh"). Enough of them — wwwwww — look like a row of grass blades, so "grass" became a word for laughing. It's the kind of thing a very-online character says out loud as a joke.

**ワンチャン wanchan — "maybe, if I'm lucky"** From English one chance. It means there's a shot: "Wanchan ikeru" — "I might just make it." Not to be confused with wan-chan, a cute word for a dog.

**エモい *emoi*** From English emotional, but it doesn't mean emotional. It means that bittersweet, nostalgic, moving feeling — a sunset on the last day of school is emoi.

**詰んだ tsunda — "I'm done for"** From tsumi, checkmate in shogi. When there's no move left that saves you — an exam tomorrow you haven't studied for — you're tsunda.

The whole list

What the subtitle can't say

Every word here has a perfectly good English translation. Maji is "seriously", kusa is "lol", ryo is "OK". The subtitle is right every time.

What it can't tell you is that the character chose that word. A girl who answers her friend with sore na and a teacher who says sō desu ne have said the same thing; they have not sounded like the same person. A character who types ryo is a teenager. A character who laughs out loud with the word "grass" lives on the internet.

That's the same trick as yani instead of tabako: a single word doing the work of a character description. Once you know the words, you start hearing who's talking.

→ Oshi no Ko on AnimeBuzz

More everyday-Japanese explainers: rough words like yani and gaki, senpai and kōhai, why anime is set in school.

Sources and notes

• 推し (Wikipedia) — the idol-fandom origin of oshi and oshi-katsu
• 若者言葉 (Wikipedia) — Japanese youth slang and how quickly it turns over
• 詰み (Wikipedia) — checkmate in shogi, the root of tsunda

Slang shifts fast and varies by region and group; "who says it" describes the general impression, not a rule. Origins given here are the commonly accepted ones.