Ya Boy Kongming is one of the popular anime of the season, which tells the story of a famous strategic general from the Chinese past era, who gets transported into a modern day Japan. However, recently some fans from China are criticizing the series for insulting China.
In the third episode of the series, we can see a female main character Eiki Tsukumi in front of a Truck. At the first look, there is nothing suspicious in the frame, however, if you look closely, you can see the license plate number of the Truck which is 47-291.
Chinese fans claim that the number combination of 47-291 has the similar pronunciation as “Shina Nukui” in Japanese, which is translated as “I hate China”. Keep in mind that in the Yo Boy Kongming, there is no number plate shown in the same manga panel. So, it does feel a little odd to include that specific number plate.
The series is already not available on any platform in China, so still there are lots of Chinese anime fans who don’t know about this, but the ones that did notice, took to the official Twitter account of the series to criticize the production committee. For now, there is no official response from the Yo Boy Kongming series officials.
On the other hand, Japanese fans claim that this isn’t some kind of a secret hate message to China, but instead, it is referring to a case that occurred last year in Japan, where a company had to call back 47,291 vehicles due to a problem.
Yo Boy Kongming is animated by P.A. Works, and hopefully they will give some explanation to this reference for Chinese anime fans. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think this is just a coincidence? or there is some kind of hidden agenda behind it? Let us know your opinion the comment section.
Lol
In what universe is 291 pronounced nukui? Shouldn’t it be nikui, maybe the artist is a fan of meat….
“nikui (憎い)” does mean hate, and “nukui” is not a word in Japanese.
Now this anime will get more attention from outside it fans, according to keikaku – Kongming
Ara Some idiot in China is trying to pick a fight
I am Chinese, no matter how I pronounce 47291 in Mandarin or Cantonese, it will never sound like “I hate China”, nothing even closed to it. Therefore I am pretty sure this hate rumor is not raised by a Chinese. I am afraid this is something made up by the other people from other Country to maker a negative image to Chinese.
Numbers in Japanese does have many ways to pronouce, and 47 291 does can be pronounced as “shi na ni ku i”.