#btw: Shigeo's Japanese voice is generally blue and smooth

[brown-little-robin]

HI so sorry to barge in here unannounced like this but u seem to have a lot more knowledge about japanese language/culture/social etiquette than i do and i've seen u mention dimple's mannerisms in canon once or twice and like . i'd love to hear more abt that if ur willing to ramble for a bit. i've been Very curious just how far dimple's Rudeness goes, but i know very little about the culture. i'm sure some things he does or says seem fairly normal to me but is considered very rude or disrespectful to the characters. no pressure tho ofc :]

hi Rika!! literally drop in anytime! I,, I appreciate this ask so much and will answer as best as I can, but I'm a very new student of Japanese and Japanese culture, so take what I say with a grain of salt! also I personally am going to tag @russenoire to respectfully invite them to partake in this conversation if they think it would be fun (no pressure of course!). they have been studying this much longer than I have :}

putting my thoughts under a cut because !!! I love to ramble!!! note: all of this is based on Dimple's Japanese voice & mannerisms from the anime. I don't have the manga in Japanese yet 🙏

As a preface: Ekubo's direct/rude/familiar speech style is typical in anime and not unheard-of in real life, but it's definitely worth noticing! Mob Psycho 100, particularly, gets a lot of its unique interest out of taking unrealistic anime expectations and saying "HEY pay attention to this, WHY is this happening, this is immature behavior, why are adults in this universe letting this happen", and making it funny and/or serious. So!!! let's dive in.

So, okay, Dimple's mannerisms. The first thing to know is very general. he usually speaks in the casual register (which has a whole distinct vocabulary from the more polite registers: for instance, he tends to end his sentences with "da" rather than "desu", which are both "is" verbs with the exact same meaning, just a different connotation). the casual register is comparatively... direct. Dimple using casual implies that he thinks of himself as on familiar terms with and/or higher in the social hierarchy than whoever he's speaking to. casual Japanese is par for the course in anime in general, especially for people expressing arrogance, like Ekubo does all the time. But still, that's A Choice. it expresses simultaneous superiority (I am allowed to speak to you in informal terms because I'm above you) and also, possibly, desire for closeness (Ekubo speaks to Shigeo in familiar terms like they're brothers).

(Politeness, respect, and distance are linked in Japanese. Casual language isn't always rude, but in the wrong situation, it can be jarring and disrespectful. Using casual Japanese is a sign of confidence and personal closeness in your relationship with someone—new friends will switch from formal to casual language at some point and typically never go back; siblings use casual language with each other as a matter of course. It's very situational.)

The second thing to know is, there are choices of first person pronouns in Japanese!!! And Ekubo's choice is spectacular. He refers to himself as "ore-sama". "ore" (roughly pronounced "o-ray") is one of two typical Japanese casual male pronouns, ore and boku. (the formal first-person pronoun for men is watashi). To my knowledge, "ore" was originally the only casual male pronoun, and then "boku" entered popular use as a more humble option and changed the meaning of the formerly more neutral-sounding "ore" by competing with it, which is fascinating. but I'm getting distracted. "ore" is the more aggressively masculine pronoun; it's considered rough/direct to the point of being rude in many contexts. And Ekubo doesn't just use "ore" (ore is a widely-used choice!), he adds the honorific -sama to the end. This is extremely macho. SUPER arrogant. It tracks with his desire to become a god: -sama is the honorific for kami as well as the honorific for people who are way higher ranked than you. giving someone the honorific -sama expresses a greater gap between you and them than -san does. this is hilarious to me. Dimple is over here referring to himself as 🔥 ME 👑 every time he uses first-person pronouns. (Mob uses boku, btw.) ore-sama isn't not used irl, but it's, uh. highly highly unusual, from what I can tell. sounds like a biker gang boss kind of thing to me—something someone on the fringes of society would use. no shade to those outside "polite society" from me, btw, I'm just stating the general connotation from a majority cultural perspective.

OH AND SPEAKING OF HONORIFICS. I'm guessing you've seen analysis of this before and/or just Get It from cultural osmosis, but Dimple calls Shigeo "Shige-chan" the second time they meet. -chan is a usually-affectionate diminutive usually given to girls younger than yourself or celebrities people find cute; I think they translate it as "li'l Shige" in the English dub? -chan has cutesy connotations and can be infantilizing if it's not used with permission and/or some kind of... y'know... familiarity and understanding between the person giving the honorific and the person being referred to with -chan. it is super disrespectful of Dimple to call Shigeo Shige-chan having just met him, and having gotten off on a terrible foot with Shigeo, no less. what the heck, Ekubo!!

And then Dimple proceeds to call him just Shigeo with no honorific at all, which is ALSO disrespectful?? given that Dimple doesn't know him, really?? too familiar, too abrupt! As a strange adult, he should be calling him Shigeo-kun! But he's treating Mob like a little brother. (For instance, as the older brother, Shigeo has the right to call Ritsu by the first name and only the first name, whereas Ritsu usually calls Shigeo "Nii-san". To my knowledge, that's not unnatural in Japanese the way it would be in English; it's not Ritsu reiterating their bond every five seconds, it's just the Expected Thing for the younger brother to refer to the older brother as "Nii-san" out of respect. you'll see the Shiratori brothers, Daichi and Kaito, doing the same thing if you pay attention. to each other, they are "Kaito" and "Nii-san". BUT ANYWAY)

Another Dimple regularly does that reads as arrogant/direct to me is sometimes speaking in a Really Low Voice. This is where my knowledge gets hazy—it's more about pronunciation and accent than "behavior" as such, so bear with me, but the general pitch of one's voice is important in Japanese. Girls and women tend to pitch their voices higher than their natural range in Japanese, especially when doing "polite" or "customer service voice". Japanese speaking men often raise their pitches for politeness/to express humility or a conciliatory attitude too, even though it's not as extreme as with women. And men who are performing aggression will often lower their pitch on purpose, creating a growling kind of effect. Dimple does this a lot. Let me see if I can embed a video of him doing it here

YES. OKAY. Listen to the difference between his mental voice and his spoken voice here!! Dimple uses a higher pitch when talking to Mob because he's trying to ingratiate himself with Mob, but then when he's muttering to himself, he reverts back to his evil-spirit, gang-boss, stereotypically-yakuza-sounding kind of... deep growl.

Relatedly, Ekubo rolls his r's. he rolls them hard. That's a really rough way of speaking, definitely not typical in "polite" Japanese. people learning Japanese are told not to roll their r's unless they want to sound like they're yakuza wannabes. (He also, to my ear, tends to kind of roll his vowels?? he puts his voice backwards in his mouth, pronouncing things either near his nose or deep in his throat, and kind of crushes them with his mouth as they emerge. I don't know if there's a word for this, but to my synesthesia it looks like his voice goes spiky. it's a COMPLETELY different sound than the smooth pronunciation of polite Tokyo-style Japanese. I don't actually have a point this is just interesting to me)

That's about all I have for now! I'm fascinated by Dimple's speaking style and what it says about him. Sorry this was more about accent than behavior—as far as behavior goes, I mean, he's weird. he's weird! as a ghost, he's not really a part of society and he just wanders around making fun of people, which would be rude in any culture. I have a whole Other rant about how Dimple improved as a person after Reigen started treating him as an employee and how that adds to MP100's theme of society and connection, but now is not the time. I hope this has been interesting to you!! Thank you for the ask!