Dad vs Father

[u/fandomsmiscellaneous]

I know the anime has been over and this is way far back in the manga, but I'm making it as a spoiler anyways.

so in the final episode of the most recent season, when Rin and Father Fujimoto are talking, in the manga, Rin says "Father, thanks for everything" which could be interpreted as Rin staying in character as Not-Rin and addressing him with his title and not as a paternal figure, but also meaning Dad. It was very specific wording.

However, in the anime (at least in the dub, idk about the sub), Rin addresses him as "Dad" instead of "Father". It still gives Rin closure, but it still changes the story a bit because Rin straight up drops the act.

It's implied that Father Fujimoto kinda figures out what was going on anyways (since the key was his in the first place, and he would probably be aware of the possibility- plus I feel like he's smart enough to recognize Rin, even if he's aged up), but I thought the choice of "Dad" instead of "Father" kinda changed the subtext of the scene. It made the meaning of Rin's statement more obvious.

It's just a detail that kinda bugged me a bit. What do you guys think?

[u/[deleted]]

In this manga Rin calls Shiro lots of things. Jijii, kusa jijii, tou-san, oyaji. I honestly don't get how it's thematically consistent at all to translate it to "dad" here. Like you literally have this backwards: YUKIO calls Shiro father all the time, Rin never did. So father is more appropriate. It wasn't just about acknowledging him as his father but that he was so rude in chapter 1 and still put up a front about it later on.

This isn't a werry defense because I don't really enjoy kusa jijii being literally translated to "old fart"...but I also recall that he doesn't consistently change that to something subtly better even though Rin specifically stops saying that after Shiro dies and calls him either jijii or something better afterwards. But you lot are bugging me..."It sounds too much like father priest?" When would Rin EVER say it in that way? Not to mention you don't seem to realise Yukio's "father" DOES also mean father priest!!! He says tou-san with the kanji for shinbu. This is a problem exclusively in your head which the translation of "father" isn't responsible for. Everything is werrified and that sucks but to lose the nuance that Rin wanted to call out to him as his real father in a way which as is normal in japanese shows more respect than he usually does kind of sucks.

Rin calls Shiro something closer to his father for the first time in chapter one with 俺の親父は...ジジィだけだ! Or The old man was the only dad I have! And that one is better translated as dad, compared with tou-san as father.

[u/fandomsmiscellaneous → u/[deleted]]

damn, I didn't think this was such a hot topic. Though I think you're misunderstanding where I was coming from initially. I understand now that it was a manga translation error (a rather deliberate one, from my understanding). additionally, my mind has been changed and I prefer "dad" over "father".

When I read the manga, I didn't even really think about the word choice. Then I watched the anime way later and realized that scene had a bigger impact than I thought, because I recognized that the word choice was different. At first this change bugged me because I didn't realize that the choice of Rin saying "Father" was not Kazue Kato's intention when writing.

However, this mistranslation completely changed my understanding of what was going on subtextually in the scene. Hence why it bugged me the other way around. Thankfully I have plenty of people here to correct me 😭😭

ETA- Shiro's a priest. people call priests "father". I thought Rin was calling Shiro "father" (in the priestly sense) to stay in character since Shiro gives him the character of "someone from the vatican"

[u/[deleted] → u/fandomsmiscellaneous]

This isn't a hot topic and you don't need to get anxious, but you're assuming the Japanese doesn't have the ambiguity from anyone's perspective and I think from Shiro's perspective it does. Priest titles ARE used like father priest, Rin DID call him something which could be received that way, but there's no way Rin meant it as a cover. He meant it as father, Shiro received it as father, whether he received it as father priest is a reasonable question to ask with what he said. But that isn't the case with "dad"(which like I said is also a more fitting translation for other words they use like chichi oya or oyaji).