Kanji
The word ojousama ojousama お嬢様. It's one of the family words in theOther spellings include:
- ojousama 御嬢様
- ojousama お嬢さま
- ojousama おじょうさま
Ojou-sama
Some people prefer to spell ojousama with a hyphen: ojou-sama. There is nothing wrong with this, it's just a(personally I wouldn't spell it that way because if the suffix gets an hyphen why wouldn't the prefix get an hyphen too? So for me o-jou-sama makes more sense, but that looks stupid.)
Translation
A Girl Whom One Serves
In manga and anime, the most common use of the word ojousama is to refer to a girl whom one serves. Specifically, it's a way to refer to the "daughter" of the family, household, which one serves.This usage is more common in fiction purely because maid and butler characters are common. They're the ones which say ojousama the most in the 2D world.
The word ojousama is used like this following a pattern of maids, butlers, servants, and even people interested in doing business with a family referring to members of a certain household by familial nouns as if they were titles.
For example, ojousama お嬢様, "daughter," would refer "the daughter" of one's masters. Lastly,
"Rich Girl"
The word ojousama may also mean "rich girl," and it's often used to refer to one in a sarcastic way. Like: "she's an ojousama, I hear she lives in a huge mansion, she comes to school by limo!" This probably comes from the way servants, etc. seriously refer to them as ojousama.
"Naive Girl"
Consquenetly, sometimes the word ojousama implies not that a girl is rich and powerful, but that she's naive, for she has lived a sheltered life so far, and has no idea of how the world works.Ojousan お嬢さん
The difference between ojousama and ojousan お嬢さん is that the sama honorific is more reverent than the san honorific, it's generally used when you're speaking to someone of higher status. (toward customers, clients, etc. their daughters count too, sure.)
Both "rich girl" and "girl whom one serves" meanings above imply someone of higher status, so ojousama is usually used, but ojousan can have those meanings too.
Ojouchan お嬢ちゃん
The difference between ojousan, ojousama and ojouchan お嬢ちゃん is that ojouchan has the diminutive chan instead of san. This means that normally it's used toward young children, a cute way of saying. But it can also imply you think the ojouchan is cute, and may sound overfamiliar used toward an ojousan you aren't really familiar with."Daughter"
The original meaning of ojousama, or rather, ojousan お嬢さん, is to refer to somebody's "daughter."Given that ojousama and ojousan have honorifics, they never refers to your own daughter, only to other people's daughters. This is exactly like musume 娘 may refer to your own daughter, but musume-san 娘さん refers to someone else's daughter.
"Miss," "Young Lady"
Another use of ojousama, or rather, ojousan is to refer to a random young woman instead, specially one whose name you don't know, since in this case you'd call her by her name in Japanese. This usage if ojousan could be translated as "miss" or "young lady."Some dictionaries say this usage refers only to young, unmarried women. Which matches the definition of "miss" in English. Of course, unless you're gifted with the power of telepathy it'd be hard to tell whether a woman is married or not just by looking at her when you don't even know her name.
"Missy," "Little Girl"
Following the meaning above, when the diminutive ojouchan お嬢ちゃん is said instead, with the cozier, more affectionate chan suffix, it generally refers to a girl who's also a small child. You could translate this ojouchan as "missy" or "little girl."In this case, using ojouchan toward a teenager or young adult woman may make her mad because it sounds like you're making fun of her, treating her like a kid. Of course, if the speaker is an elder it won't sound as offensive, but people may get mad about this.
Also, sometimes ojouchan implies not that the girl is thought of as a child, but that speaker thinks he can just talk in such familiar way to her without even using a proper san suffix like they're old friends or something, and that may sound offensive in a different way.
"Lady," Shukujo 淑女
By the way, the word for "lady" in Japanese is shukujo 淑女, written with the kanji of shitoyaka 淑やか, "graceful," "refined," and "woman," onna 女. A refined woman, a lady. A fine woman.This is just to make clear that ojousama is only translated as "young lady" together, no part of the word means "young" or "lady." To say "young lady" literally, wakai shukujo 若い淑女.
Pretend Ojousama
As one would expect, it's possible for ojousama to be used toward a girl whom one doesn't actually serve per contract, but pretends they're serving for reasons, like they're pretending to be maid or something and an ojousama is essential for such play, or perhaps even sarcastically, if the ojousama in question is being too bossy, acting like an ojousama, acting like a "queen," joousama 女王様.Okaerinasaimase Ojousama
In butler cafés, clients, women, are referred to as ojousama, and they're greeted by the phrase okaerinasaimase ojousama お帰りなさお嬢様, an extra-polite way of saying "welcome back [home], young lady."Maid Café Greeting
This is obviously the same thing the happens in maid cafés, except in those the word ojousama is used in maid cafés too to refer to young women, girls.Ojou お嬢
The word ojou is simply ojousama, ojousan, ojouchan, without the honorific suffix.
Within the animanga fandom, it's particularly used to refer to certain ojousama characters nicknamed ojou, like Eri from School Rumble, who's often called Ojou by character within the series, and Ojou from Oshiete! Gyaruko-chan おしえて! ギャル子ちゃん, a series where characters don't have real names, they're just referred to by their archetypes.
Jou 嬢
The word jou 嬢 is ojousama without the honorific affixes. This jou is a suffix, which can be used in two ways.First, it can come after a woman's name, as a title, like "lady" or "miss." For example, say there's a woman called Tanaka 田中, then Tanaka-jou 田中嬢 would be "miss Tanaka" or "lady Tanaka."
Second, the suffix jou appears in some words referring to female-dominated professions. Some examples include:
- uketsuke-jou 受付嬢
Receptionist. ("reception," uketsuke, girl.) - koukan-jou 交換嬢
Telephone operator. (in the past, calls went through manual switchboard operators, who were women.) - kyaba-jou キャバ嬢
kyabakura-jou キャバクラ嬢
Employee of a hostess bar. (literally "caba-clu girl," from "cabaret club girl.")
Ojōsama, Ojōsan, Ojōchan
The words ojōsama, ojōsan, and ojōchan, with macrons, are the same thing as ojousama, ojousan, and ojouchan, they're justThis happens because long vowels such as those found in the syllables jou じょう and joo じょー may sometimes be romanized as a single letter with a macron instead of two letters.
おじょーさま
Sometimes these words are spelled using a jou じょう. This denotes a change in the pronunciation of the word by a character.- ojoosama おじょーさま
- ojoosan おじょーさん
- ojoochan おじょーちゃん
Trope
In the anime and manga community, both western and Japanese, an ojousama お嬢様 character is a character who's a "rich girl," who was born a "rich girl," was raised like a "rich girl," looks like a "rich girl," acts like a "rich girl," and... well, it's a rich girl!Now, if that sounds like an extremely vague, utterly meaningless description to you, because, I mean, rich girls, what do we know about them? They're rich, got money. Their gender: female. That's about it. Could this even be considered a trope? It's because these ojousama characters bring with them a collection of clichés, sub-tropes and other repeating patterns that people care enough about to classify.
Ultimately, however, an ojousama is just a rich girl. Some people are misled to think that an ojousama character must be like this or like that. For example, that she must have a bitchy attitude toward the "commoners" around her, or that the ojousama must have servants, or something like that. This isn't necessarily true, it's just that a lot of ojousama characters are like that.
Moe Factor
For reasons, ojousama characters are considered to be ojousama characters to their works because they're popular with fans, specially in harem anime, and of course the authors like them too.Master-Servant Ship
Inherent of ojousama characters are master-servant relationships. It's not unusual for an ojousama character to have a monstrously efficient butler who'll gladly serve her every whim, or, likewise, a maid. They don't even need to be impeccable, clumsy is fine too.Since maids are moe, butlers are moe, and ojousama are moe, you get this whole moe package that attracts the attention of a wider-audience all at once. In this moe scheme, the male counterpart of ojousama is of course the
Furthermore, the total moe throughput of a couple of master-servant characters is greater than the sum of its individual parts.
Some people consider the master-servant or lord-retainer relationship itself to be a kind of moe. In some cases, the servant character has worked for a given family for years, and has come to think of the ojousama as their daughter or younger sister. In some cases, the servant-ship is out of admiration. There are also scenarios involved contracts and the tension of coercion and stipulations.
Comedy Factor
Besides being used for its moe effect, ojousama characters are also often included for their comedic effect. This bring with it a number of tropes that are seen extensively in basically every shitty harem anime with an ojousama character.Sub-Tropes
The following are recurring scenarios that follow ojousama (and bocchan) characters in anime:- Arriving to school by limousine.
- Having a driver. (see: Kuragehime 海月姫)
- Having a helicopter.
- Having a private jet.
- Having a summer house, bessou 別荘.
- Absolutely necessary for that obligatory fanservice beach episode where each character must feature a different designs of swimsuits and you can only wonder the grueling work the author must have trying to decide which is the best swimsuit for a character. (for a documentary on this endeavor, watch Outbreak Company.)
- Sometimes, owning a whole fucking desert private island. (see: Saiki Kusuo no Psi-Nan 斉木楠雄のΨ難, season 2.)
- By the way the beach episode usually happens in another trope, the training camp trope, which is usually right in the middle of the anime because of how school years and summer vacations work.
- Also absolutely necessary is an yacht. Can't do without an yacht. Nope.
- Lacking common sense due to upbringing.
- Not knowing you're supposed to wash your own damn self in the bath and nobody is going to do that for you. (As seen in Seitokai Yakuindomo 生徒会役員共)
- Not knowing what a fruit looks like unpeeled. (as seen in Musekinin Kanchou Tylor 無責任艦長タイラー, although it technically was an empress, not ojousama.)
- Unhinged abuse of money. (late stage capitalism, ho!)
- Purchasing absurdly expensive things.
- Attempting to buy Akihabara.
- Yes, Akihabara. The, Akihabara. One whole Akihabara. (as seen in the anime Shangri-La)
- Solving everybody's money problems.
- Paying off debt.
- Purchasing debt. (see: Hayate no Gotoku! ハヤテのごとく!)
- Offering discounts in family-owned business. (see: K-On!)
- Keeping exotic pets.
- I mean, do you have any idea how much a Critically Extinct Persianasian Saber-Toothed Ring-Tailed Albino Byakko White Tiger from Madagascar costs? Like, what does that thing even eats?
- Exceptionally plotty family.
- Dead. Character inherits everything.
- Even if not dead, being an heir of a fortune means she gets targeted by assassins and stuff. (see: Kamen no Maid Guy 仮面のメイドガイ)
- Strict, tons of rules, traditions, ceremonies.
- Can't leave house. Home tutoring, private teacher. Caged bird.
- Obligatory money-blowing kimono.
- A "mansion," yashiki 屋敷, "Japanese-style," wafuu 和風, with tatami 畳 flooring and full of sliding doors. (see: Hyouka 評価)
- Pond with koi 鯉 carp fish.
- That bamboo thing that goes *doink* every time it hits a rock or something because it's filled with water and when it fills it falls and put that water in the pond.
- What the hell is that thing called anyway?
- Oh, it's a shishi-odoshi 鹿威し, "deer-scarer," it makes the noise to scare animals away so they don't eat plants. Wow, I always thought the point was putting the water in for circulation or something, never could I have imagined it was made to make noise! Incredible.
- Huge fortress-like walls with a huge gate or something. (see: Hunter x Hunter, specifically Zoldyck's residence.)
- Forced marriage because of business, politics, etc.
- Involved in some ancient cult which has been passed down the family line for generations!
- Satanic rituals. Pokémon summoning. (see: Fate/Stay Night.)
- Demon pacts. (see: Hellsing)
- Infusing spirits into children. (see: Naruto lol jk, don't see that. See: Kara no Kyoukai 空の境界.)
- Beautiful, bishoujo 美少女 or bishounen 美少年.
- Guess people just prettier when they got cash.
- Money is attractive, they say, they probably didn't mean this, though.
- It's the hair.
- The dazzling, golden hair.
- You know, there's a chance it's bathed in actual gold. It probably wouldn't work in real life, but in anime anything goes.
- Yeah, pretty sure bathing wouldn't work. Probably. Gold is metal so it'd get all rigid in strand form, no flow. Besides the hot liquid gold would set your hair on fire while you're bathing it. Not good.
- I'm no high-end hair aestheticist Ph.D. in bio-metallic chemistry, though, so it might work. Don't think it would, though.
- And the affordability of expensive clothes.
- Which is totally wasted by the fact the character is probably just going to spend like four fifths of the season wearing just their high school uniform or something.
Personality
The ojousama characters usually have uncommon, or rather, uncommoner personalities. The mix of sheltered life, semi-infinite purchasing power, and a family environment commoners can't imagine is probably the cause of this.A common ojousama theme is a character beyond one's reach (and socioeconomic class). The fact they're much richer, better educated, and probably have nothing in common with the main character is the source of much romantic doubt.
Added to that, some ojousama have a holier-than-thou attitude, in which they'll call other characters commoners and believe she is indeed above them, born meant to reign over these filthy peasants (including even the PC gamers).
The above is sometimes the cause of a tsun by saying stuff like "y-you're just a commoner/butler, who do you think you're to talk to me this way?!" eventually regret saying it and then come back showing that cute dere'ing side.
Some ojousama characters are particularly capricious and childish in their actions.
On the other side, some ojousama have no cute side, and are just some nasty, mean, rich bitches.
On the other-other side, some ojousama have no sides besides their cute side. Being a paragon of elegance, emitter of the soothing aura, they have a permanent chill status wherein nothing ever fazes them, allowing themselves to arbiter arguments and calm the masses with their maa maa まぁまぁ~ lullaby.
Sometimes, an ojousama character may be naive about things, or clumsy, having a total, absolute and utter lack of common sense, given her upbringing.
Appearance
Generally, ojousama characters are- Genetics.
The girl, her older sister, her mother, and basically every woman that shares her blood is gorgeous. - Shampoo.
Evidence suggests that ojousama are the only characters that can afford proper hair care in anime, often donning the smoothest of the hairs, long twintails, springing drills drilled so hard you get tired just thinking how much effort the animators put into drawing them, while low-life commoner characters end up with bed hair and ahoge アホ毛.
An ojousama character may an heightened sense of style, given their purchasing power.
Blonde Hair
A good number of ojousama are "blonde," kinpatsu 金髪, and not just any blonde, but naturally blonde, given that Japanese hair is normally naturally black, and that a character with dyed blonde hair is usually a delinquent or some gaudy teenager girl, gyaru ギャル.Consequently, ojousama characters often have a backstory that they are not Japanese, from a family rich enough to afford moving into Japan, probably for business reasons. This probably also helps connect the tuxedo-butler and french-maid uniforms given these are rather western things.
Drills
It's common for ojousama characters to feature "drills," or "drill hair," that is, "ringlets," which often look like golden drills because they're spiral narrowing downwards.In Japanese, they're also called "drills," doriru ドリル. In particular, ringlets pigtails are called "twin drills," tsuin doriru ツインドリル, because in Japanese pigtails are called "twintails," tsuinteeru ツインテール.
Laugh: Ohoho!
Within the manga and anime fandom, the ojousama laugh refers to the iconic "ohohoho!" laugh often emitted by ojousama characters while making an equally iconic gesture of covering their mouths with their hands at an angle.This kind of a laugh is, without doubt, literally the most annoying, obnoxious, infuriating, rage-inducing, teeth-gritting audio pattern ever concocted by the obscure, sadistic confines of the Japanese human mind. Second only to Excalibur, of course. These smug little shits are the fuel of nightmares of many traumatized fans who wake up in the middle of the night, sweating with PTSD, hearing the the phantasmagorical "oh ho ho ho!" echoing inside their heads as they morph into fetal position crying, sucking on their thumbs trying to calm themselves down, holding onto towels not to panic, and then go back to sleep.
On the other side, some fans actually like this laugh. (they're fucking nuts. Maniacs, I say. Evidently psychopaths.) So much there's even a Youtube channel,
Of course, given this is just a laugh there's no rule that says you must be a rich young lady in order to be allowed the privilege of ridiculing your lessers this way. Any character can laugh this way, it's physically possible regardless of status or digits in their bank accounts, it's just that ojousama characters are more likely to do this, hence why the name attributed to it is ojousama laugh.
Ohoho in Japanese
In Japanese, "ojousama laugh" is called literally that, ojousama warai お嬢様笑い, using the verb "to laugh," warau 笑う.Since it's typically a manically "loud laugh," the term takawarai 高笑い may also refer to it. However, this can also refer to other laughs besides the ooho'ho'ho' オーホッホッホッ, such as haaha'ha'ha' ハーハッハッハッ, for example.
Related: "sneer" would be choushou 嘲笑.
Speech
Often, ojousama characters feature a rich-girl speech pattern in which they'll use certain Japanese words and expressions that reflect their education and upbringing, but that are ultimately lost in translation and out of grasp for westerns unless a translator who's also an English major is involved.I'll explain here some of the expressions used by the ojousama. Note that they aren't exclusive of ojousama characters, they're mostly polite or female speech, it's just that they're often used by ojousama characters.
Ara あら
The ara in Japanese is an interjection, female speech. This ara あら is used to express slight surprise and curious amusement toward some new statement or happening. Translated as "oh!" or "ah!" simply. In a conversation, it may be translated as "I see! Then" or something of sort.In some cases ara is used at the start of a snarky remark by an ojousama, like "ara, I thought you said you'd never fall in love a peasant? What happened? Did you fall and hit your head against the floor? Did your brains fell off your ear? I'm sorry for your father! You're the shame of your family. An absolute dishonor! I don't know what the teachers are thinking letting someone like you take classes in our prestigious school, it smears mud on our name. You should just get married with him already and go live in the suburbs where you belong! Ohohohohohohohoh~~!!" or something like that.
Arara あらら
Sometimes the ra is repeated: arara あらら. Not to be confused with ararararagi, which is something else.Ara ara あらあら
The word ara ara あらあら is, literally, ara twice. The meaning of ara ara in Japanese is the same as ara, just stronger, meaning the speaker probably saw something more curious and more amusing to be surprised and amused at.Maa まぁ / まあ
The word maa in Japanese is both an adverb and an interjection. Spelled as まあ or まぁ with a small あぁ.Usually, it means something along the lines of "well, for now..." or "that's true, but..." Generally, it tries to slow down the conversation for the speaker to put forth their conclusion. "I see. I think that..." It can also be used to slow down the conversation inconclusively, "I see what you're saying. But calm down."
In manga and anime, it gets particularly used when other characters get agitated talking about something and jumping at conclusions. making exaggerated statements, etc. then the ojousama comes by and maa~ makes them calm down and realize it's not that much.
Maa Maa まあまあ
The word maa maa まあまあ is maa twice. Who could have guessed. Because it's repeated, maa maa is translated as "now, now," which's a also repeated, often, even though maa has nothing to do with time, because it'd mean "now, now, let's not get ahead of ourselves," for example.Desu wa ですわ
The expression desu wa ですわ combines the polite copula wa わ, used by female characters with a rising pitch.Note that de gozaimasu でございます, de arimasu であります, are other polite polite forms of desu that an ojousama may use too. (see the article explaining for details.)
If you are learning Japanese, behold, it's one of the rare times you get the actual particle wa わ and not that fake-ass
This wa わ particle expresses exclamation, decisiveness or emotion of the speaker.
- kou desu wa! こうですわ!
Like this!
[It] is this way! (literally)
In real Japanese, the wa particle is used by both men and women alike. It's pronounced with a weak, lowering pitch, with some women raising the pitch instead.
In fiction, it's pretty much always used by female characters, male characters using ze ぜ or something else instead, and the wa is always pronounced with a rising pitch, maybe because it fits the anime voices and character stereotypes better that way.
Masu wa ますわ
The masu wa ますわ used by ojousama characters is basically the same thing as above. What changes is that masu isn't the copula, but an auxiliary affixed to verbs to create the polite forms of verbs.Basically, if there's a verb, any verb, there's a "polite" version of it, which ends in ojousama using it denotes how she was raised in different environment, more educated, polite.
Kashira かしら
The expression kashira かしら is (kind of) a sentence-ending particle too. It's usually female language, not used by men, but in anime it's pretty much always used by female characters. As for the meaning, kashira means "I wonder," as in, you're thinking about something you're uncertain about.- sou kashira? そうかしら?
I wonder if that's so.
Is that so, I wonder? - baka kashira 馬鹿かしら
Is he an idiot, I wonder?
Maybe he's an idiot?
The wordmeans "daughter" in Japanese , similar to musume 娘, and it also means "young girl," and "rich girl." In anime and anime-related discussion,oroften refers to a rich girl character.The word written with kanji isお嬢様. It's one of the family words in the o__san お〇〇さん pattern , having both the honorific prefix (o 御) and an honorific suffix (sama 様, san さん, chan ちゃん) Other spellings include:Some people prefer to spellwith a hyphen:. There is nothing wrong with this, it's just a different romaji for the same word (personally I wouldn't spell it that way because if the suffix gets an hyphen why wouldn't the prefix get an hyphen too? So for memakes more sense, but that looks stupid.)In manga and anime, the most common use of the wordis to refer to a girl whom one serves. Specifically, it's a way to refer to the "daughter" of the family, household, which one serves.This usage is more common in fiction purely because maid and butler characters are common. They're the ones which saythe most in the 2D world.The wordis used like this following a pattern of maids, butlers, servants, and even people interested in doing business with a family referring to members of a certain household by familial nouns as if they were titles.For example, goshujinsama ご主人様 means literally "master," and also "husband," as the "husband" historically ends up being the "master" in question. The term okusama 奥様 , "wife," is used to refer to "the wife" of one's master. Thenお嬢様, "daughter," would refer "the daughter" of one's masters. Lastly, bocchan 坊っちゃん may be used to refer to "the son."The wordmay also mean "rich girl," and it's often used to refer to one in a sarcastic way. Like: "she's an, I hear she lives in a huge mansion, she comes to school by limo!" This probably comes from the way servants, etc. seriously refer to them asConsquenetly, sometimes the wordimplies not that a girl is rich and powerful, but that she's naive, for she has lived a sheltered life so far, and has no idea of how the world works.The difference betweenandお嬢さん is that thehonorific is more reverent than thehonorific, it's generally used when you're speaking to someone of higher status. (toward customers, clients, etc. their daughters count too, sure.)Both "rich girl" and "girl whom one serves" meanings above imply someone of higher status, sois usually used, butcan have those meanings too.The difference betweenandお嬢ちゃん is thathas the diminutiveinstead of. This means that normally it's used toward young children, a cute way of saying. But it can also imply you think theis cute, and may sound overfamiliar used toward anyou aren't really familiar with.The original meaning of, or rather,お嬢さん, is to refer to somebody's "daughter."Given thatandhave honorifics, they never refers to your own daughter, only to other people's daughters. This is exactly like娘 may refer to your own daughter, but娘さん refers to someone else's daughter.Another use of, or rather,is to refer to a random young woman instead, specially one whose name you don't know, since in this case you'd call her by her name in Japanese. This usage ifcould be translated as "miss" or "young lady."Some dictionaries say this usage refers only to young, unmarried women. Which matches the definition of "miss" in English. Of course, unless you're gifted with the power of telepathy it'd be hard to tell whether a woman is married or not just by looking at her when you don't even know her name.Following the meaning above, when the diminutiveお嬢ちゃん is said instead, with the cozier, more affectionatesuffix, it generally refers to a girl who's also a small child. You could translate thisas "missy" or "little girl."In this case, usingtoward a teenager or young adult woman may make her mad because it sounds like you're making fun of her, treating her like a kid. Of course, if the speaker is an elder it won't sound as offensive, but people may get mad about this.Also, sometimesimplies not that the girl is thought of as a child, but that speaker thinks he can just talk in such familiar way to her without even using a propersuffix like they're old friends or something, and that may sound offensive in a different way.By the way, the word for "lady" in Japanese is淑女, written with theof淑やか, "graceful," "refined," and "woman,"女. A refined woman, a lady. A fine woman.This is just to make clear thatis only translated as "young lady" together, no part of the word means "young" or "lady." To say "young lady" literally,若い淑女.As one would expect, it's possible forto be used toward a girl whom one doesn't actually serve per contract, but pretends they're serving for reasons, like they're pretending to be maid or something and anis essential for such play, or perhaps even sarcastically, if thein question is being too bossy, acting like an, acting like a "queen,"女王様.In butler cafés, clients, women, are referred to as, and they're greeted by the phraseお帰りなさお嬢様, an extra-polite way of saying "welcome back [home], young lady."This is obviously the same thing the happens in maid cafés, except in those the word goshujinsama ご主人様 is used instead. Sometimes,is used in maid cafés too to refer to young women, girls.The wordis simply, without the honorific suffix.Within the animanga fandom, it's particularly used to refer to certaincharacters nicknamed, likefrom School Rumble, who's often calledby character within the series, andfromおしえて! ギャル子ちゃん, a series where characters don't have real names, they're just referred to by their archetypes.The word嬢 iswithout the honorific affixes. Thisis a suffix, which can be used in two ways.First, it can come after a woman's name, as a title, like "lady" or "miss." For example, say there's a woman called田中, then田中嬢 would be "miss Tanaka" or "lady Tanaka."Second, the suffixappears in some words referring to female-dominated professions. Some examples include:The words, and, with macrons, are the same thing as, and, they're just different romaji for the same Japanese word This happens because long vowels such as those found in the syllablesじょう andじょー may sometimes be romanized as a single letter with a macron instead of two letters.Sometimes these words are spelled using a prolonged sound mark ー on the long vowel syllableじょう. This denotes a change in the pronunciation of the word by a character.In the anime and manga community, both western and Japanese, anお嬢様 character is a character who's a "rich girl," who was born a "rich girl," was raised like a "rich girl," looks like a "rich girl," acts like a "rich girl," and... well, it's a rich girl!Now, if that sounds like an extremely vague, utterly meaningless description to you, because, I mean, rich girls, what do we know about them? They're rich, got money. Their gender: female. That's about it. Could this even be considered a trope? It's because thesecharacters bring with them a collection of clichés, sub-tropes and other repeating patterns that people care enough about to classify.Ultimately, however, anis just a rich girl. Some people are misled to think that ancharacter must be like this or like that. For example, that she must have a bitchy attitude toward the "commoners" around her, or that themust have servants, or something like that. This isn't necessarily true, it's just that a lot ofcharacters are like that.For reasons,characters are considered to be moe 萌え by some, which evidently means authors must keep addingcharacters to their works because they're popular with fans, specially in harem anime, and of course the authors like them too.Inherent ofcharacters are master-servant relationships. It's not unusual for ancharacter to have a monstrously efficient butler who'll gladly serve her every whim, or, likewise, a maid. They don't even need to be impeccable, clumsy is fine too.Since maids are, butlers are, andare, you get this wholepackage that attracts the attention of a wider-audience all at once. In thisscheme, the male counterpart ofis of course the bocchan 坊ちゃん Furthermore, the totalthroughput of a couple of master-servant characters is greater than the sum of its individual parts.Some people consider the master-servant or lord-retainer relationship itself to be a kind of. In some cases, the servant character has worked for a given family for years, and has come to think of theas their daughter or younger sister. In some cases, the servant-ship is out of admiration. There are also scenarios involved contracts and the tension of coercion and stipulations.Besides being used for itseffect,characters are also often included for their comedic effect. This bring with it a number of tropes that are seen extensively in basically every shitty harem anime with ancharacter.The following are recurring scenarios that follow(and) characters in anime:Thecharacters usually have uncommon, or rather, uncommoner personalities. The mix of sheltered life, semi-infinite purchasing power, and a family environment commoners can't imagine is probably the cause of this.A commontheme is a character beyond one's reach (and socioeconomic class). The fact they're much richer, better educated, and probably have nothing in common with the main character is the source of much romantic doubt.Added to that, somehave a holier-than-thou attitude, in which they'll call other characters commoners and believe she is indeed above them, born meant to reign over these filthy peasants (including even the PC gamers).The above is sometimes the cause of a tsundere ツンデレ attribute, not only toward the riff-raff from her school, but sometimes toward her butler, etc. She'llby saying stuff like "y-you're just a commoner/butler, who do you think you're to talk to me this way?!" eventually regret saying it and then come back showing that cute'ing side.Somecharacters are particularly capricious and childish in their actions.On the other side, somehave no cute side, and are just some nasty, mean, rich bitches.On the other-other side, somehave no sides besides their cute side. Being a paragon of elegance, emitter of the soothing aura, they have a permanent chill status wherein nothing ever fazes them, allowing themselves to arbiter arguments and calm the masses with theirまぁまぁ~ lullaby.Sometimes, ancharacter may be naive about things, or clumsy, having a total, absolute and utter lack of common sense, given her upbringing.Generally,characters are bishoujo 美少女 characters. It's just common sense that in anime rich girls are "beautiful girls." This doesn't stem from plastic surgery, of course not, but, instead, probably from these two main factors:Ancharacter may an heightened sense of style, given their purchasing power.A good number ofare "blonde,"金髪, and not just any blonde, but naturally blonde, given that Japanese hair is normally naturally black, and that a character with dyed blonde hair is usually a delinquent or some gaudy teenager girl,ギャル.Consequently,characters often have a backstory that they are not Japanese, from a family rich enough to afford moving into Japan, probably for business reasons. This probably also helps connect the tuxedo-butler and french-maid uniforms given these are rather western things.It's common forcharacters to feature "drills," or "drill hair," that is, "ringlets," which often look like golden drills because they're spiral narrowing downwards.In Japanese, they're also called "drills,"ドリル. In particular, ringlets pigtails are called "twin drills,"ツインドリル, because in Japanese pigtails are called "twintails,"ツインテール.Within the manga and anime fandom, thelaugh refers to the iconic "ohohoho!" laugh often emitted bycharacters while making an equally iconic gesture of covering their mouths with their hands at an angle.This kind of a laugh is, without doubt, literally the most annoying, obnoxious, infuriating, rage-inducing, teeth-gritting audio pattern ever concocted by the obscure, sadistic confines of the Japanese human mind. Second only to Excalibur, of course. These smug little shits are the fuel of nightmares of many traumatized fans who wake up in the middle of the night, sweating with PTSD, hearing the the phantasmagorical "oh ho ho ho!" echoing inside their heads as they morph into fetal position crying, sucking on their thumbs trying to calm themselves down, holding onto towels not to panic, and then go back to sleep.On the other side, some fans actually like this laugh. (they're fucking nuts. Maniacs, I say. Evidently psychopaths.) So much there's even a Youtube channel, ohohojousama , that only uploads short compilations of "ohoho!" laughs and has dozens of videos.Of course, given this is just a laugh there's no rule that says you must be a rich young lady in order to be allowed the privilege of ridiculing your lessers this way. Any character can laugh this way, it's physically possible regardless of status or digits in their bank accounts, it's just thatcharacters are more likely to do this, hence why the name attributed to it islaugh.In Japanese, "ojousama laugh" is called literally that,お嬢様笑い, using the verb "to laugh,"笑う.Since it's typically a manically "loud laugh," the term高笑い may also refer to it. However, this can also refer to other laughs besides theオーホッホッホッ, such asハーハッハッハッ, for example.Related: "sneer" would be嘲笑.Often,characters feature a rich-girl speech pattern in which they'll use certain Japanese words and expressions that reflect their education and upbringing, but that are ultimately lost in translation and out of grasp for westerns unless a translator who's also an English major is involved.I'll explain here some of the expressions used by the. Note that they aren't exclusive ofcharacters, they're mostly polite or female speech, it's just that they're often used bycharacters.Thein Japanese is an interjection, female speech. Thisあら is used to express slight surprise and curious amusement toward some new statement or happening. Translated as "oh!" or "ah!" simply. In a conversation, it may be translated as "I see! Then" or something of sort.In some casesis used at the start of a snarky remark by an, like ", I thought you said you'd never fall in love a peasant? What happened? Did you fall and hit your head against the floor? Did your brains fell off your ear? I'm sorry for your father! You're the shame of your family. An absolute dishonor! I don't know what the teachers are thinking letting someone like you take classes in our prestigious school, it smears mud on our name. You should just get married with him already and go live in the suburbs where you belong! Ohohohohohohohoh~~!!" or something like that.Sometimes theis repeated:あらら. Not to be confused with, which is something else.The wordあらあら is, literally,twice. The meaning ofin Japanese is the same as, just stronger, meaning the speaker probably saw something more curious and more amusing to be surprised and amused at.The wordin Japanese is both an adverb and an interjection. Spelled as まあ or まぁ with a small あぁ.Usually, it means something along the lines of "well, for now..." or "that's true, but..." Generally, it tries to slow down the conversation for the speaker to put forth their conclusion. "I see. I think that..." It can also be used to slow down the conversation inconclusively, "I see what you're saying. But calm down."In manga and anime, it gets particularly used when other characters get agitated talking about something and jumping at conclusions. making exaggerated statements, etc. then thecomes by andmakes them calm down and realize it's not that much.The wordまあまあ istwice. Who could have guessed. Because it's repeated,is translated as "now, now," which's a also repeated, often, even thoughhas nothing to do with time, because it'd mean "now, now, let's not get ahead of ourselves," for example.The expressionですわ combines thecopula desu です with the sentence ending particleわ, used bycharacters with a rising pitch.Note thatでございます,であります, are other polite polite forms ofthat anmay use too. (see the article explainingfor details.)If you are learning Japanese, behold, it's one of the rare times you get the actual particleわ and not that fake-ass particle wa は which is written with ha は instead because of reasons Thisわ particle expresses exclamation, decisiveness or emotion of the speaker.In real Japanese, theparticle is used by both men and women alike. It's pronounced with a weak, lowering pitch, with some women raising the pitch instead.In fiction, it's pretty much always used by female characters, male characters usingぜ or something else instead, and theis always pronounced with a rising pitch, maybe because it fits the anime voices and character stereotypes better that way.Theますわ used bycharacters is basically the same thing as above. What changes is thatisn't the copula, but an auxiliary affixed to verbs to create the polite forms of verbs.Basically, if there's a verb, any verb, there's a "polite" version of it, which ends in masu, masen, mashita, or masen deshita . Again, most anime characters don't use this kind of speech. So theusing it denotes how she was raised in different environment, more educated, polite.The expressionかしら is (kind of) a sentence-ending particle too. It's usually female language, not used by men, but in anime it's pretty much always used by female characters. As for the meaning,means "I wonder," as in, you're thinking about something you're uncertain about.
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