Gattai 合体

gattai 合体, written with the combining mechas!!!

otoko no rouman 漢の浪漫. If you're a fan of the mecha genre then it's only natural you impatiently wait for that gattai scene sequence to show up in pretty much every mecha anime. People love that shit. It's the robot equivalent of hand holding.

Non-Mecha Gattai

It's worth nothing that although gattai often means for robots to combine in anime, it can refer to gattai'ng other stuff too.

For example, in the series Shin Megami Tensei 真・女神転生 "True 'Goddess Reincarnation'," features a system called akuma gattai 悪魔合体, "demon combination," which lets you fuse two or more demons into one. The demons, by the way, are not robots, they're living (?) flesh.

The Persona series also features a similar system.

Sometimes fusions in Dragon Ball are referred to as gattai, sometimes as the katakanization of "fusion," fyuujon フュージョン.

Non-Anime Gattai

Besides that, gattai can also be used for many kinds of merging. Like when two companies merge, or two websites merge, etc.

Grammar

For reference, some basic gattai phrases:

• gattai 合体
  Combination. (noun)
• gattai suru 合体する
  To combine. To merge. To unite.
• gattai shita 合体した
  To have combined.
• gattai shiro 合体しろ
  To combine. (imperative)
• gattai dekiru 合体できる
  To be able to combine.
• gattai seikou 合体成功
  Successful combination. (hurray!)

Anata to Gattai Shitai! あなたと合体したい

One rather funny bit that rarely shows up in anime is a second meaning the word gattai has.

• gattai 合体
  Having sex with (someone).

Now if you're wondering "what?" the answer is very simple:

• hitotsu ni naru 一つになる
  To become one. (literal)
  To make love with. (figurative)
• X to hitotsu ni naru Xと一つになる
  To become one with X.

hitotsu ni naru, "to become one," as in, for two things to become one, figuratively becomes "to become one (with someone)," which is an idiom for "to have sex with" or "to make love with" or "to marry with" or

In Japanese, the phrase, "to become one," as in, for two things to become one, figuratively becomes "to become one (with someone)," which is an idiom for "to have sex with" or "to make love with" or "to marry with" or ecchi suru エッチする or however you may want to interpret it.

Someone probably thought: two people "to become one" means "to make love," ergo "combination" means "love-making," and that's how the word gattai came to mean that. It's probably a wordplay (though I have no proof.)

Usually you see these phrases in the -tai form instead.

• kimi to hitotsu ni naritai 君と一つになりたい
  [I] want to become one with you.
• anata to gattai shitai あなたと合体したい
  [I] want to combine with you.

But the wordplaying doesn't stop there.

The phrase anata to gattai shitai shows up in the anime Sousei no Aquarion 創聖のアクエリオン, which is a mecha anime. Now, usually gattai, in mecha, refers to the combining, of mechas, so the usage of this phrase is probably a joke making a reference to the genre while also making the wordplay on hitotsu ni naritai.

To make matter worse, in the anime Aquarion, machines that gattai'd were same-sex, not hetero-sex, so the term dousei-gattai 同性合体, "gattai" also came to be.

To worsen the matters made further, of course the Japanese anime community wouldn't let this kind of high-level pun to go unnoticed, so people started using the phrase anata to gattai shitai as a meme.

*wordplaying intensifies*To make matter worse, in the anime Aquarion, machines that'd were same-sex, not hetero-sex, so the term同性合体, " homosexual " also came to be.To worsen the matters made further, of course the Japanese anime community wouldn't let this kind of high-level pun to go unnoticed, so people started using the phraseas a meme.

To farther matter the worst making, to deal the final blow, comes, of course, as one would expect, the parody manga, containing the meme, that comes from the genre-referencing joke, that makes use of the wordplay, that's based on the idiom, that means "to make love."

In Japanese, the word合体, written with the kanji for the words "join" and "body," means, literally, to combine two or more bodies into one. Although the term can be used in a number of ways, in anime it's pretty much always used to refer to one thing: It's known: one or more giant robots fitting together into one bigger mecha is a "a man's passion,"漢の浪漫. If you're a fan of the mecha genre then it's only natural you impatiently wait for thatscene sequence to show up in pretty much every mecha anime. People love that shit. It's the robot equivalent of hand holding.One rather funny bit that rarely shows up in anime is a second meaning the wordhas.