I explained this at the beginning, but some people might not have seen it, so I'll explain it one last time.
For example, Sendou Akira's akira seemed to be this word, but I was used to pronouncing it as akila. A friend who understood Japanese told me that ra and la were pronounced the same.
Also, don't think I posted this just to show off.
You could tell the author's personality from the protagonist. I wasn't that flamboyant a person, and in nearly thirty years of my life, this was the first time anyone had said I was showing off.
As for names, I wanted to say that many Japanese pronunciations sound awkward or unpleasant when called out in Chinese. For example, close people call each other by their given names—calling someone "Akira" just didn't sound good at all. Like Nagumo Hajime, the protagonist of Arifureta—would it sound good if people just called him "Hajime"?
For another example, "so impressive." Japanese was rather lacking in this sort of praise. Every time I typed "so impressive" in an exclamatory tone, I would say it aloud, and hearing those three words in that tone made it sound like a kindergarten kid talking.
It reminded me of the translated Japanese anime I watched as a child. "So impressive" always gave me a cringe or childish feeling.
For another example, sauounara, meaning goodbye in Japanese—sa, yo u, na, la. Japanese people rarely said it because it carried the meaning of a final farewell. When the protagonist said it to Sawamura before, it had the joking implication of using a word for permanent parting. No one could feel that layer when I typed it in Chinese.
For another example, Sawamura's frequent modest yeyeye—how was I supposed to translate that? It would be "no, no, no," but Sawamura liked using it as a verbal tic, to show modesty and sometimes happiness. Viewers found it cute too. I couldn't exactly play audio, so I was pretty desperate as well.
Later, after high school, Sawamura especially liked
shouting yoshi yoshi yoshi as his signature line. It could no longer be translated as simply "great"; it had already become synonymous with Sawamura, a meaningless entrance line. Sawamura himself had said it was his catchphrase. Even if I translated it as "great," shouting "great, great, great" three times while reading it nearly embarrassed me to death. My cringe syndrome flared up, but shouting yoshi didn't feel embarrassing.
There would also be Japanese puns later on, like "the air tastes great." How could air possibly taste good? It was just that "tasty" and "fresh air" had the same pronunciation in Japanese.
I wrote Japanese anime fanfiction because I hoped the original characters would feel more like Japanese people. I would also do my utmost to restore their personalities. God knew how many times I watched Ace of Diamond just to understand the personalities of Sawamura, Narumiya Mei, and the others.
I didn't want to stuff the dialogue with Chinese idioms and Chinese memes, then have Japanese people somehow understand puns that only worked in Chinese.
Since the protagonist was Japanese, I wanted him to give people the sense of a Chinese person gradually integrating into Japan.
That meant his lifestyle habits would be Japanese, but some Chinese elements would still appear in them. Later, the Japanese characters wouldn't understand the protagonist's actions and he would explain them to them, or he would simply show that side of himself when no one was around.
I wanted people to feel the fusion of his past and present lives.
I wanted to bring these characters to life. If someone said that the Sawamura I wrote really resembled the Sawamura from the anime, I would be extremely happy and feel that my effort and portrayal had been rewarded.
If he didn't resemble him, then I was still working hard to imitate him and make him as close to the original character as possible. I knew myself that there were still problems with my portrayal of Sawamura. For example, middle school Sawamura might not have begun speaking with "hahaha," but there was too little material on middle school Sawamura, so I could only use a little of that to flesh him out.
Otherwise, wouldn't the novel become the protagonist's one-man show? Or would a failed portrayal turn Sawamura into someone else? Or would supporting characters only need to listen to the protagonist talk and move around? To me, that would be a failed portrayal.
The Sawamura I saw had the unruliness and impulsiveness of lifting Miyuki up, the usual idiot-like reaction speed, the incredible calmness and reliability at critical moments, his everyday cuteness, his smug delight whenever others slipped up, his love for manga, and so on. All of that together was the Sawamura I needed.
Without that kind of Sawamura, Ace of Diamond would no longer be Ace of Diamond.
The other characters were the same. For example, Narumiya Mei—I felt that Mei and Sawamura were very similar in many ways.
I didn't want to write them as robots, nor did I want to turn them into Chinese people.
So the romanization issue wasn't me showing off. I sincerely felt that it was meaningless. If someone told me my character accuracy was high and my plot ideas were clear, I would be very happy.
I didn't want to write it either, but sometimes Japanese pronunciation was simply more fitting. Chinese could work too, but for people to understand the difference, I would need dozens of words to explain it.
Even I felt that would look like padding. A clumsy Chinese-style romanization was more straightforward, could prevent people unfamiliar with Japanese-style romanization from mispronouncing it, and could be paired with a brief explanation in parentheses so people understood the intended meaning. There was no need for a long explanation of a word's pronunciation.
So please stop bringing up the romanization issue for all sorts of reasons. If you liked Japanese people thinking like Chinese people, you could skip the romanization or drop the story. My original intention was only to portray the people from the original work more like Japanese people.
Before you continue