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A new anime started this week called, in English, _Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun_. I
thought the first episode was pretty good, but the title was kind of a turn
off. If I hadn't seen reviews saying it was good, I probably would have
skipped it due to the title alone.

Later I found out the title is actually mistranslated. It should be " **Earth-
bound** " not "toilet-bound". Yes, the ghost being contacted at a certain
toilet stall is part of his backstory, but that is a relatively minor point
that didn't need to be in the title, especially if they have to mistranslate
it to do so.

Why would the translators of both the manga and anime do this?


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anime-production manga-production toilet-bound-hanako-kun
Why would a studio intentionally mistranslate the title of "Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun"?


While translating 地縛 ( _jibaku_ ) literally means "earthbound" (land + bind),
the 地縛 in the official Japanese title 地縛少年花子くん **refers
to[地縛霊](https://jisho.org/word/%E5%9C%B0%E7%B8%9B%E9%9C%8A) ( _jibakurei_ ),
which means "ghost _bound to a specific physical location_ (usu. where death
occurred)"**.

The definition of 地縛霊 from Daijisen (a general-purpose Japanese dictionary)
used by [Japanese
Wikipedia](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9C%B0%E7%B8%9B%E9%9C%8A) is

> 自分が死んだことを受け入れられなかったり、自分が死んだことを理解できなかったりして、死亡した時にいた **土地や建物などから離れず**
> にいるとされる霊のこと。
>
> A ghost whose exists on **a place (e.g. a land, building, etc.) at the time
> of their death and cannot wander off** from there because they do not accept
> their death or understand why they died.
>
> (Emphasis mine)

As an aside, the English term is "residual haunting" or [Stone
Tape](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Tape).

The Japanese title replaced the kanji 霊 (ghost) to 少年 (boy). Thus, the literal
translation of it is "Hanako-kun, the boy who is bound (to a certain place)".
It actually does not refer to any place at all.

Regarding the official English localization by [Yen
Press](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yen_Press), this is just a guess, but
they possibly chose "toilet-bound" due to the origin of the tale and the
character's in-universe background. Regarding if "bound" is correct or not (in
refer to the anime), the official Japanese title refers to "bound" though.

*地縛 can also be read as [_jishibari_](https://jisho.org/word/%E5%9C%B0%E7%B8%9B), though it is unrelated to "earthbound" at all. On the other hand, the Japanese never uses 地縛 for "earthbound".


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