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Spoilers for Kaguya-sama s3

We see that there's this mysterious character that people call 怪盗 (kaitou), which I'm learning is actually a thing in fiction and specifically in Japanese fiction because in the Wikipedia page for Gentleman thief or phantom thief there's like a Japanese translation specifically

A gentleman thief, gentleman burglar, lady thief, or phantom thief (Japanese: 怪盗, Hepburn: kaitō) is a stock character in fiction.

and even a whole section for 'notable phantom thieves in Japanese popular culture'.

Tonikaku

As it turns out...

The mysterious character is Miyuki Shirogane, the student council president aka 生徒会長 (Seito kaichō aka Seito kaichou). I notice that kaichou seems to rhyme with kaitou. As far as I understand, it's just changing ch(o) to t(o) or ちょ to と.

Question:

Is this supposed to be some kind of wordplay/foreshadowing that

the 'kaitou' turns out to be the 'kaichou'

?

1 Answer 1

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It's very unlikely. (I haven't seen the actual episode, though.)

For a reason, the Japanese language has many homophones. 怪盗 and 会長 are both common words, and they don't usually count as a similar-sounding word pair in the first place.

  • For かいとう: 怪盗 has many homophones; 解凍 "defrosting", 解糖 "glycolysis", 回答 "answer", 解党 "disbanding of a political party", 開頭 "craniotomy", and so on are all read as かいとう.

  • For かいちょう: 会長 also has many; 階調 "gradation", 快調 "in good shape", 怪鳥 "mysterious bird", 海鳥 "ocean bird", 開帳 "exposition" and so on are all read かいちょう.

People who speak a language like this are unlikely to think the similarity of 会長 and 解凍 would serve as a valid wordplay.

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  • ok thanks naruto. I wasn't able to find any article saying this is a wordplay or something, so you're probably right. Also it's not just 1 episode with 'kaitou'. It's several episodes towards the end. So I don't think you're really missing anything.
    – BCLC
    Commented Jun 28, 2022 at 10:37

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